As the national debt becomes a hot topic for political chatter, China looms larger than ever. Meanwhile, opportunists of all political stripes scream that we are indebting ourselves to an emerging economic and military power. We have, in their eyes, fallen into China’s trap. What this too-common view ignores is this vital truth: In our economic relationship with China, we are still the alpha dog.

True, the national debt is hovering around $11 trillion and increasing — and as the debt increases, China acquires even more of that new debt. But while these numbers sound troubling, they are not nearly as worrisome as fiscal disciplinarians would have you believe. Their fears stem from a general misunderstanding about how this nation sells its debt, as well as China’s purpose in buying it.

Most who pay attention to politics and policy have a basic, rough understanding of how our government sells off debt: the Department of the Treasury holds debt auctions at several points during the year, at which point private investors, insurance companies, funds, the Federal Reserve itself and foreign governments have the ability to buy our debt in the form of treasury bonds to be paid back with interest at a certain point in the future.

This is the common misunderstanding. In fact, debt is something that you can literally grasp. If you have a dollar in your pocket, you are holding a portion of the national debt. It says that the U.S. Treasury will guarantee the value of that dollar to however much it is worth. Fiscal disciplinarians and demagogues screaming about the debt would like you to believe that a majority of our debt sales go to nations our population views as rivals, such as China. But in fact, only a little less than a quarter of our debt is held by any foreign central bank; the Federal Reserve holds a little less than half. We still hold most of the cards.

Meanwhile, China is somewhat enslaved by our debt. The structure of their economy requires them to continue to buy our debt without demanding their money back. The Chinese Central Bank can never, at least while their economy is export-oriented, sell our debt. If tomorrow the Chinese Central Bank were to sell off all of its U.S. Treasury bonds, it would mean that they would be converting most if not all of their dollars into their own base currency, the yuan.

Their economy would tank overnight. While they would sell off all of their dollar reserves, thus deflating the price of the dollar, they would at the same time increase the value of the yuan — a disastrous result for China, as higher-priced currency means that fewer nations would be able to afford Chinese exported goods — including the United States, whose currency China would have just deflated. It doesn’t help to bankrupt your best customer.

While China would be able to afford more imported goods, unfortunately for them they have no real domestic demand. The same logic could also be applied to why China won’t stop buying our debt. If they were to stop, then our dollar would be deflated in relationship with the yuan, and they would be unable to sell us as much cheap goods as their “growing” economy requires.

So why all the fear from media pundits and politicians, if the calculations and odds are still in America’s favor? It’s somewhat psychological as well as political. Even I must admit that $11 trillion isn’t chump change, and most American’s don’t have enough time or patience to get a real crash course in how our Federal Reserve and Treasury work. This makes the issue easy political points for whichever party happens to be in the opposition — all to scare the next Joe the Plumber into supporting their candidates.

James Sunshine is a College freshman from Boca Raton, Fla.