This is really an astonishing number. From James Fallows' new essay, "The $1.4 Trillion Question:"

Through the quarter-century in which China has been opening to world trade, Chinese leaders have deliberately held down living standards for their own people and propped them up in the United States. This is the real meaning of the vast trade surplus—$1.4 trillion and counting, going up by about $1 billion per day—that the Chinese government has mostly parked in U.S. Treasury notes. In effect, every person in the (rich) United States has over the past 10 years or so borrowed about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China.

Based on 2006 per capita GDP numbers that means we've sucked almost 23% per year from the average Chinese earner's income.

Can you imagine what you'd do if someone was borrowing 22% of your income a year and forcing you to endure a lower standard of living in the process? You'd be rather unhappy, no?