Market cap and it's not even close. Turns out financialisation is the classic you-get-what-you-asked-for-not-what-you-wanted of capitalism. We told the optimiser to make number go up, and number has certainly gone up. China's number? Not as up.

I think it could have gone differently if we gave our economic system something to optimise other than itself, but then we wouldn't have centibillionaires, so... swings and roundabouts I guess?

Who cares which country has a higher market cap? That's a capitalist concept, of course the capitalist country has more. I'm talking who has the more advanced technology.