In what area does china still lag well behind the united states?

The move was announced at the start of China’s National People’s Congress, the annual rubber-stamping get together of the country’s parliament.

Despite Beijing’s increased spending, China still lags some way behind the US when it comes to defence spending.

Figures for 2014 from the International Institute for Strategic Studies show the US spent $581bn on defence in 2014, which is four and a half times China’s spend.

In some ways this remains unsurprising.

China has recently cooled down its GDP aspirations, revising its annual targets to 7% from 7.5%, but it remains one of the world’s biggest economies. Nevertheless, it still trails behind the US in terms of GDP and the gap is even more extreme when you look at GDP per capita - given the Asian country’s huge 1.4bn population.

However, there are some areas where the world’s most populous country is beginning to nudge ahead of the US.

This February was the first time that China posted the highest box office receipts of any country in the world, according to research company Entgroup.

While the percentage of the nation that is online is obviously lower than in the US, China has the highest number of internet users in the world. This is particularly important as the mass popularity of some websites, such as microblogging platform Weibo and search engine Baidu is almost entirely driven by its domestic market.

The proliferation of the self-funded anti-air pollution documentary by filmmaker Chai Jing, which has been watched hundreds of millions of times, is evidence of the potential strength of this internet user base. Air pollution in China is so bad that the US mission in Beijing runs a Twitter account posting daily updates on its risks.

It’s therefore perhaps surprising given China’s importance in the emissions debate that the country produces a higher proportion of its energy from renewables than the US does - although 21% of net energy production from renewables is hardly, say, Iceland.

Hope helps:)