According to a survey by the Pew Research Center China lead the U.S.. Back in 2008, before the financial crisis, a European median of 44 percent considered the United States the leading economic powerhouse worldwide. In that year, 29 percent considered China the world’s leader.

China raced into the lead for the first time in 2010, and today, it’s viewed as the foremost economic power by 49 percent of Europeans compared to 34 percent for the United States. Interestingly, the shift in peception concerns America’s premier European allies – France Germany, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom.

US investor Philip Anschutz is pulling out of China because it’s hard to him to collect the money he’s earned.  The US sees to it that peope get paid the money they are owed.  A factor to conisder in the concept of “economic power.”

This chart shows the median view across EU nations on the world’s leading economic power.