We're a car culture. US cities and suburbs were designed for cars long ago. Hence the focus on the next iteration of cars: self driving. Plus, isnt the bike sharing thing turning into a disaster in China with stolen bikes?
Really, facial recognition when you walk into work is sign of our lagging technology? Sounds more like over engineering a trivial thing.
We've got rockets landing themselves, electric cars driving themselves, the re-emergence of VR with augmented reality on the way, blockchain technology (started in the US), and were still leading in AI by the way.
The big stuff on the near-horizon are sea-steading communities experimenting with governance, quantum computers, lab grown meat, exoskeletons, and more useful household robotics.
The long term R&D bets are whats paid off for us and there is no reason to assume they wont continue too. China can copy us 6 times over due to their population, but if their emphasis is always on "get it out the door now!" then they will just be waiting around looking for the next thing to copy from California.
I'm getting kinda tired of this anti-US sentiment articles.