For China, it's a record buildup of foreign capital. For the rest of the world, it serves as a reminder: To an increasing degree, bureaucrats in Beijing aren't just guiding their own economy, but the world's as well.

In coming days, China's stockpile of foreign currency reserves, the fruits of fast-growing exports, will reach the unprecedented sum of $1 trillion. What's important isn't the level - a nation's foreign reserves are rarely big news - it's what it represents.

China is growing so fast that it could, less than two decades from now, rival the United States as a key driver of the world economy, economists say. That development presents big opportunities for global growth - but also great risks, if China's leaders mishandle their nation's emergence and transformation on the world's economic stage.

Looming questions about global growth, free trade vs. protectionism, and even the financial well-being of future US retirees could have answers for which key parts are stamped, "Made in China." The juggernaut is just getting started.

"If our simulations are anywhere close to the mark, the world has a grace period of about five years before it really begins to feel the heat of China's emergence," Stephen Roach, global economist at the investment bank Morgan Stanley in New York, wrote in a report earlier this year. "How the world then copes with China may well be the biggest what-if of all."

Already, China is the focal point in a worldwide debate about the virtues of the headlong pace of globalization. Workers in many nations have lost manufacturing jobs to lower-cost laborers in provinces near Shanghai and Hong Kong.

"In the developing world, there's China and there's everybody else," says Charles McMillion, who tracks China at consulting firm MBG Information Services in Washington. "Their five-year plans are just truly the economic-development equivalent of the Great Wall." Read More

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