[adventured]

I agree, they're very clearly doing that already. Fortunately there's not much new about it however. Japan was supposed to conquer the world with its economy in the 1980s. Every headline breathlessly touted that fact. It was seemingly universally believed. They had a vast trade surplus, their market was hyper restricted to outsiders, they were rapidly generating wealth and had a higher GDP per capita than the US. The Japanese were conquering one industry after another, whether traditional industrial or electronics, and frequently accused of dumping as they went. Sound familiar?

Today:

US GDP per capita: $60,000

Japan: $38,000

If China does everything right, somehow avoids any recessions or depressions, sees no major consequences from dictator Xi, magically stops accumulating debt at a torrid pace - in about 20 years they'll finally catch up to the US economy in size.

Given their population base, maybe it is inevitable; it won't be easy however. The US has been a comparatively very well oiled economic juggernaut for 150 years, and it's still rolling, commonly outpacing far smaller economies in growth. No country in world history has put together an economic stretch like the US has since the Civil War. China has a lot to prove about being able to manage something like that, especially under a power hungry dictatorship and utilizing a command & control tilted model. Filling in economic slack is the easiest part of growing an economy, that's where all the talking heads got Japan so wrong. Today all the talking heads are extrapolating China's easy fill-in-the-slack growth forward perpetually. They're going to be wrong again, the question is to what degree.