# China Now Has the World's Largest Capital Stock — per Person, a Third of America's

> The flow of world investment crossed in 2011; the accumulated stock crossed in 2022. Where the stock has and has not crossed — structures, equipment, housing, knowledge — says where the next two decades of building will go.

Publisher: The Quant (https://thequant.market)  
Published: 2026-11-08  
Section: economics  
Language: en  
URL: https://thequant.market/articles/china-now-has-the-world-s-largest-capital-stock-per-person-a  
Cite as: The Quant, "China Now Has the World's Largest Capital Stock — per Person, a Third of America's", 2026-11-08, https://thequant.market/articles/china-now-has-the-world-s-largest-capital-stock-per-person-a

---

The first piece in this series mapped where the world's $28.6 trillion of annual fixed investment takes place. Flows, however, are only half the ledger. What an economy owns is the stock — the accumulation of every past flow, minus decay. We have computed that stock for 48 economies over 1995–2024 using the perpetual inventory method: each year's investment flow added, last year's stock depreciated, by asset class where the data allow. The map that results reorders the world.

## From flows to stocks: the $277 trillion map

The measured capital stock of these 48 economies stands at roughly **$277 trillion** in constant 2015 prices. The ranking matches the flow map only loosely, because stocks remember: they carry thirty years of building, weighted by how long each asset lasts.

---

This is the opening of the article. The full text is at https://thequant.market/articles/china-now-has-the-world-s-largest-capital-stock-per-person-a (a free account opens some articles, a subscription opens all). Please cite: The Quant, "China Now Has the World's Largest Capital Stock — per Person, a Third of America's", 2026-11-08, https://thequant.market/articles/china-now-has-the-world-s-largest-capital-stock-per-person-a