What can the US do?

China's population is a huge advantage right now, China has figured out how to create a mostly participatory economy so they have 10x the number of brains engaged vs. the US.

Each US citizen must be 10x more productive just to tie. If the US gov were smart, we would make it significantly easier for those with skills to immigrate, but unfortunately we seem to be set on doing the opposite.

On top of that, China is making smart educational choices like making basic comp-sci required. The US educational system is using decades old curriculum or just cancelling classes altogether.

Who is people? There's been lots of people noting this parallel for a very long time. In fact, it's exactly China's playbook.

Here's an example from 2007 where NDT is discussing China's emergence that people were missing at the time: https://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/commentary/2007-08-0...

There was another talk (from NDT too IIRC) I recall seeing that compared the amount of academic papers China puts out. It's a poor metric & there is more low-quality submissions coming out of China, but overall they were set to overtake the US. Expect university prestige to start migrating east to top Chinese universities (assuming they become more friendly for immigration).

Samuel Slater ("Father of the American Industrial Revolution") is known in the UK as "Slater the Traitor". He stole the textile machinery designs from UK as an apprentice, then migrated to the US and build his own mills. British law banned exporting textile mill designs.

China will surpass the USA in raw GDP by mere virtue of its population size. All they have to do is get to something like 1/3 US GDP per capita and they'll easily win in absolute terms.

This is only a bad thing if China continues to become more authoritarian and starts getting truly belligerent.

What people? Plenty of people are concerned with what they're doing. US government is too inept to do anything or they're willingly cooperating with them.

Copying is one thing. State-sponsored wholesale transfer of trade theft is another. Now, I don't doubt for one second that the US/CIA has not done anything shady like that in the past but I do not believe it has ever been on the scale of effort that China has undertaken. And I say to my own country's detriment - more power to them. While the US fumbles with domestic politics, social justice endeavors, and enriching other countries, China has risen to take its place by taking the opposite stance and focusing all its energy on making itself the foremost global economic giant.