China and the US are about the similar at the moment:
The root of all strengths stems from the size of economy and the strength of the manufacturing sector within. Everything else is secondarily derivative.
Their respective GDP charts are wrong. China is much larger and the US is much smaller than they appear.
So the OP is massively misleading.
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The US economy, in spite of its current size, is in reality way smaller:
- the unsustainable statue of USD as the default world’s reserve currency drastically makes it overvalued, which reflected in its over-bloated "fake" GDP.
- the inertia of former (not current) USA superpower statue enables it enjoy many "invisible" "soft power" GDP advantages today which otherwise would not exist, or soon would be shrinking in size significantly. e.g. English as lingua franca, its pop music industry, its massive financial industry with NYC/Wall Street as the financial capital of the world, numerous marketing brandings whose valuations are overwhelmingly based on the global recognition that "USA is the sole superpower of the world" instead of their pure intrinsic values, etc. In other words, once USA's image as the sole superpower is severely challenged, a big size of its Service Sector GDP would be vaporised sooner than many realise.
Let's not forget USA's biggest national debt in world history, its unsustainable military budget, its largely paralysed party politics, its cancerous top-down ponzi scheme that is called "Fed", and its insolvable problems raised from its permanent racial divide ( white-black-latino), etc. All these will become a massive burden for the US economic performance in the foreseeable future. Without super strong economy, the overwhelmingly super strong US military power, innovation power, financial power of Wall Street, and softpower such as English language and opulence of Hollywood etc can not be sustained and will in time collapse on their own feet.
China, on the other hand, is much stronger than what its current GDP figure implies and what most people realise:
- China has world's largest manufacturing sector which is increasingly climbing up the value chain. China's R&D size and quality are becoming larger and better year by year, which are supported by China's huge pool of scientific and engineering talents (ultimately decided by its high national avg IQ).
- China's hugely under-valued RMB gives a fake impression that China has very low GDP/cap. Don't be surprises that China's GDP/cap could have a rapid rise once RMB is allowed to be more market-oriented.
All these factors are artificially suppressed in its current "fake"( undervalued) GDP figure compared to the US.
However, China does have weaknesses, noticeblely the "Party above Law" hence no true rule of law whenever it really matters which has profound negative consequences to the Chinese economy (GDP hard power: massive misallocation of funds, missive corruptions which limit the effectiveness of innovations and productivity increase in order to move up the value chain, etc ), and to the Chinese society (softpower: social corruptions, lost of confidence on potentially huge soft power of Han Chinese' own language and culture, blindly following unsustainable materialistic Western consumption lifestyle and (idiotic) pop idols the massive US entertainment industry is heavily depends on, the severe lack of social justice and morale, etc ) that otherwise could have been naturally solved in tune with the improvement of the economy.
Fortunately China's Xi Jinping is doing sth serious on curbing corruptions. If he can eventually manage to restore rule of law instead of rule of party, I am confident that China could whistle pass the US on most fields within our lifetime, EASILY.