system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
LI5: Will someone please explain the current situation/relations between the U.S. and China?

I would just like to know more about the relations with the U.S. and China, seeing how some people say we will go to war eventually, and others say we are friendly. Thanks.
gpt
The U.S. and China are a lot like siblings in a big family.  And it's not just the two of them.  There's many siblings in this family and they hit growth spurts at different times.  Each gets into fights with other siblings from time to time, but by and large most of the siblings get along just fine with the others most of the time.

There are a few special dynamics in the relationship between U.S. and China.  The U.S. has a much bigger allowance each week than China and has had for a very long time, but China has recently been doing more and more of the chores and so they've been making a better allowance.  In fact, the U.S. has even started letting China do some of its chores that it didn't like as much or that didn't make as much allowance.  During this time when China was growing and making a better allowance, the U.S. stopped growing so much and China got closer and closer to the size of the U.S. allowance.

People sometimes wonder if the U.S. and China are going to get into fights, and it's certainly possible, but unlikely.  The United States still has WAY bigger arms than China, even though China is making more and more allowance.  China also has to work REALLY hard to make all that allowance, and it gets them dirty and sick sometimes, and sometimes they push themselves so hard that their body rebels against itself.

The U.S., of course, still makes a huge allowance, but it's also gotten into trouble by borrowing allowance from China so it can keep buying the nice candy that it likes.  Eventually, China will get tired of seeing the U.S. buy candy using China's money, but China can't just take it's money back - the U.S. already spent it on candy!  Other siblings are also constantly noticing how big China has gotten and how slow the U.S. has been growing lately, but that's just because it's so easy to see big changes instead of how big each of them really are.  Right now, the sort of chores China has been doing don't help it grow bigger arms, at least not big enough so that they could win a fight with the U.S.  So instead, the U.S. and China keep trading allowance money and chores.  China still doesn't have the arms to fight with the U.S., but it might one day.

Still, China hasn't shown much interest in fighting, especially not taking away other siblings money, in a long, long time.  Japan, Britain, and other siblings before them have started fights with China and won, but China has only really been picking on the siblings that follow it around and can't defend themselves, like Tibet.  The U.S., on the other hand, picks on siblings all the time, and even starts fights.  It's hard to say whether the U.S. would ever start a fight with China, but the easiest way to see it happening is if China's arms started getting so big that the U.S. wasn't sure it could still win in a fight anymore.  That fight would be really dangerous, and it would hurt everyone a lot.

I think, in the end, the U.S. and China will keep being friends until something that they both need runs low or runs out.  In this family, there's a pantry full of food but a lot of it is too high for some of the smaller siblings to reach.  China and the U.S. can reach pretty high up, but the more they eat, the less there is for everyone else and the higher they have to reach to get enough to stay full.  Once they can't reach enough food to stay full anymore, they'll probably fight each other for what the other one has, but only after one of them picks on a little sibling that the other one likes a lot, like Taiwan, Japan, or India.  Even still, when the U.S. has picked on Iraq or Afghanistan, China hasn't been able to do anything to stop it, even though they'd like the food that the U.S. gets from Iraq now.

China and the U.S. have been trying to be more popular lately, especially to Pakistan and siblings from Africa.  This is a more friendly way to compete for allowance, and it's probably how they'll play for a while.