The US will remain top. Certainly safer for India.

"A new breed of American declinists argue that by alienating old allies, President Donald Trump is undermining his nation's standing in the world and ceding the mantle of leadership to China," wrote financier Ruchir Sharma. People have been predicting the Chinese economy replacing the US as the global leader but, "America is a tested economic super-power, having survived 23 recessions and a Great Depression since 1900. China remains untested, having suffered not one outright recession since its modern renaissance began around 1980." Central banks buy US treasuries as a major part of their foreign currency reserves. China holds over $3.1 trillion in reserves. "Having the world's favourite reserve currency is an economic advantage and a symbol of great power status, which is why China has been eager to establish the renminbi as a reserve currency." The renminbi was added to Special Drawing Rights of the International Monetary Fund on 1 October 2016, which meant that the currency should have been freely tradable. Several experts were unimpressed. "The IMF announcement is likely signalling a turn for the worse in the Chinese economy," predicted VA Nageswaran. He was right, because almost straight after the IMF announcement China tightened controls over exchange of renminbi for foreign currencies. "China's new rules on yuan transfers are not capital controls," lied the official news agency, Xinhua. Having built up its reserves China relaxed currency controls in September this year and it fell 0.5% immediately. China should not try to open up before restructuring its debt, wrote M Pettis. The government controls all banks so there is no danger of default but debt can shackle economic growth, so local governments should be forced to reduce debt by selling assets and money should be transferred to households to increase domestic consumption. Moody's cut China's credit rating because its debt has reached 260% of GDP. China is using economic imperialism to take over strategic assets of poorer countries, by first lending money at high rates of interest and then forcing countries to hand over assets to prevent default, wrote  B Chellaney. The National Security Strategy document names China as the major danger to US supremacy, wrote S Sirohi. Perhaps, the greatest danger to China's ambition to conquer the world may come from a tiny impoverished state, namely North Korea, wrote Prof WPS Sidhu. Some Chinese say that a nuclear war in Korea is inevitable but this maybe an attempt to scare South Korea into breaking relations with the US. Romans, Ottomans and the British had great empires but they are marginal nations today. Empire building is much tougher now. Perhaps China will not even be the greatest economic power, wrote C Balding. A collapse of China will certainly be a sigh of relief for us in India. Will 2018 be the year it happens?