Aircraft carriers are a weapons platform that requires both tech prowess and organizational culture to wield. For this reason, America has more than a single carrier task force. Russia and the handful of others could only field a single one. (Instead, Russia had focused on building up their submarine fleet). The carrier groups have allowed the US to project both military and soft power around the world.

But that is just on the surface. What may not be as well-known are asymetric weapons platforms that are cheaper to operate and have been demonstrated effectiveness against larger naval vessels, within the US's own military war game exercises. In the last one, the oppositional team had been able to use such platforms to defeat their larger opponents, to the point that the exercise was cancelled. China has definitely been developing those weapons platforms. (I think the US has been as well, but the US also need to maintain the facade that the carrier groups are the premier projection of power).

Furthermore, the cultural aspects are eroding. The US military is a voluntary service organization, which has been the leading explanation of why the US can field multiple carrier groups, and no other country could. However, training and operational fitness has been eroding. This is what lead to the several naval disasters a couple years ago. They threw the commanding officers under the bus, but the deeper causes are (1) erosion of quality training for ship handling and (2) the personnel are running ragged, where normal ship operations are being affected (let alone what that says about their ability to operate in wartime conditions). This all happened within the US 7th Fleet, that operates within China's sphere of influence.

It's just as well that US pressure on China is being exerted through a trade war instead of military positioning.

(I also have had talks with friends about space-based kinetic weapons platforms, which, if fielded, changes the game dramatically in favor of the US).

As far as China's economic and technological power in the civilian sector ... There is a lot of advantages there. Probably the biggest thing is that China has cultural unity, greater economic optimism, and a cohesive will of the populous to catch up and displace US as the leading world superpower. The US, in contrast, is wracked with a culture war, and 70 years of policing the world and 30 years of trying to maintain the post-Cold War liberal order has left a very tired, pessimistic country.