Remember the huge geisha advert in the 1982 Blade Runner? People were extrapolating from decades of Japanese economic growth, and thought that Japan will leave everyone behind...
You don't even need to enter the realm of sci fi actually.
"Gung Ho" (1986) and "Die Hard" (1988) both feature Japanese corporate overlords doing things as core elements of the plot. Not necessarily evil, its just kinda assumed that Japan would take over large parts of even the US Economy back then.
Japan's "economic miracle", although it was cut short by the 1990s, was an incredible rise. Japan is still one of the major world economic powers, in large part due to its humongous growth.
Japan grew until they roughly matched the GDP per capita of the successful western nations, then slowed down. Anything even close to same result with India or China would overtake the US economy.
To overtake the US, each Japanese worker would have had to produce twice as much value as an American worker, but each Chinese or Indian worker only needs to produce a quarter as much as an American worker.
Remember the huge geisha advert in the 1982 Blade Runner? People were extrapolating from decades of Japanese economic growth, and thought that Japan will leave everyone behind...