I tried talking about this in an earlier draft of my article but found it to be a deep rabbit hole. I'd like to explore this more fully in a future post. I feel that will be more divisive in it's reception :-)
If you take this task you have to do an incredibly deep dive of China vs USA. The US is the global leader primarily because of this focus on the individual and individual achievement. European countries compare somewhat poorly as they're sort of focused on the individual but with huge dollops of government support/intervention. China however is completely unapologetic in its team driven focus and now has significant success to back up that this method can work. I'd be interested in someone who can contrast/compare there.
You have fallen into the trap a little ;) what does it mean to be a global keader? What are the true goals? Scrrr's comment was discussing happiness. Neither China nor the US do nationwide happiness surveys AFAIK.
Unfortunately even though its not, its soon becomes for you when others start doing that.
A few days back, I remember there was a story posted here about a fisher man living the good life, and having the best of time with family, friends and leisure. Only that later another fisher man helped by a business guy started working extra hours, sets up his own company, establishes a monopoly and employs the first fisher man. Soon the first guy sees though he didn't want any of it, he is now a part of that very system.
For philosophical sort of happiness to work, we all need to go into some sort of equilibrium without ever breaking a few rules that are necessary to preserve the equilibrium. That is neither possible, nor good for the larger fate of our society.
Is that focused on the individual? Putting your stamp on the world, success - those seem to me like they might be very social measures.
By contrast, the only people I've found it worthwhile comparing myself with, on any sort of regular basis, are me yesterday, last week and last year. Am I stronger this year than I was last; do I know how to do more? And that, while being a highly individual focused way of doing things, seems to work fairly well. I don't get a crushing sense of not being as good as others or not measuring up to my potential; if I think I'm not as good as I should be at something, then I just get better at that for tomorrow.
There must be only a few behaviors more self centered than wanting to put your stamp on the world. It is all about you, even if you do not care for anyone to know, it is about you.
People seem to have certain tastes for what sort of mark they'd want to leave. How many people want the mark they leave on the world to be a scar - and if your answer to that is quite a few, how do you explain the relative absence of scars on the world?
Of course one can argue that wanting to leave a positive memory is just as selfish as wanting to leave a negative one, but that would seem to me to be arguing in the same sense that wanting to donate to charity is an act of selfishness.