Critique of Sheridan's criticism of White's paper

Comments on Greg Sheridan “Distorted vision of future US-China relations”, 11/09/2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/distorted-vision-of-future-us-china-relations/story-e6frg6zo-1225917582189
Sheridan's article is full of criticism of White's article: nearly possible to find any recognition of any positive side of White's from Sheridan's critique.

I haven’t read White's paper and am not in a position to comment it.

Having said, I find some of Sheridan's points stretched.

For example, he criticises White's argument on economic size and possible relative change in the 4th last paragraph. He says White is inconsistent in terms of real dollar and purchasing power parity because White says China’s economy could take over the US by 2020 and that Australia is the 14th largest economy. He argues that the latter is in dollar term and that the former “is complete nonsense but is only even conceivable as a dream if you use the essentially meaningless parity purchasing-power measure”.

It seems that Sheridan may have got the fact wrong and would be better of to do some serious checking and study.

Although China’s economy is a little over a third of that the US’ in dollar terms now, it is not inconceivable for China to catch up with that of the US in 2020. This is because it only requires the following to occur: the differential growth rate is 7.2% a year and a less than 50% appreciation of the Chinese currency.

The experience in the past decade shows both are possible and can be reasonably expected to occur.

If Sheridan can get this wrong, what else couldn’t his argument and judgment if based on relative economic strengths be wrong?