According to a recent Pew Reasearch Center poll. nearly half of Americans (47%) believe that China is the number one economy in the world. Only 31% believe that it's America. Americans' opinions, however, are clearly being skewed by something, as they don't reflect the reality of the situation.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

In fact, the U.S. economy is about three times the size of China’s in nominal terms, and its GDP per capita is roughly 10 times bigger. But when it comes to popular perceptions of China in America, those facts apparently don’t matter. Ahead of President Obama’s meeting next week with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, the one statistic everybody is looking at is the alarming unemployment rate, hovering just below 10%. For China, it’s around 4%.

The point of the matter is, Americans are perceiving the U.S. economy as weaker than China, and according to what we've found, if U.S. citizens don't believe that China is on top now, they fear that they will be soon.

So, what's at stake here? With the White House preparing for Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit next Wednesday, it is imperative that President Obama take a strong stance on rebalancing trade, and in particular address China's currency manipulation.

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