[api]

Not really. Japan gained significant inroads and became a major world economy but did not “take over,” and demographics caused Japan to cool off quite a bit toward the 2000s.

China has similar demographics, but is also larger. It has roughly 4X the number of people as the USA, so all it would take to equal the USA in aggregate is reaching 1/4 of US GDP per capita. GDP/capita is a more meaningful measure anyway.

[pretendscholar]

Thats what I'm saying. They didn't take over despite all the expert predictions that they would overtake the United States by the mid 1990s. Chinese population is aging far more rapidly than the US due to the one child policy, their economic system is largely dependent on exports to countries where it is increasingly politically unviable to continue such trade. They are far more overleveraged than the united states is or ever was. Additionally they have to import the vast majority of their oil so in an economic crisis they would have to have to retain access to usd for oil which is a precursor to many system critical end products.

https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/ Here is a neat visualization of their demographic situation. There are worse demographics but the point is that they have run out of labor for an export led economy and the internal base for a consumption led economy. Same thing is true for Germany which means they will have to find another production model which means major political instability.

[Fjolsvith]

Not mentioning their food crisis.

Edit: Or coal shortage.