So? Even if bad metrics push the inevitable a few years down the road it's still inevitable. China will become the dominant world power some time in the next decade or so and there's not a whole lot we can do about it.
In my uneducated opinion, theres lots of factors. However, economy/wealth is by and far the largest one, because almost everything else seems to have a price tag.
And even if they weren't more out less directly equitable, how long would it take for one to pull up the other.
China has 4x the population the US does. The US won the cold war because it had a larger economy, partly because it had a larger population. That's not how any future conflict is going to shake out