[WillEngler]

"If you owe the bank $100,000 the bank owns you. If you owe the bank $100,000,000 you own the bank." Not a perfect parallel to this situation, but a nice aphorism.

[peterlk]

This is simply not true in when both countries can print currency, and the global markets are heavily reliant on the value of those currencies.

[api]

A similar way of looking at it that I've heard: The USA got hundreds of billions of dollars worth of manufactured goods and raw materials, while China got hundreds of billions of rows in a SQL database.

Of course that analysis leaves out the skills, experience, and intellectual property they also got. That's more significant than dollars.