The US and the (relatively small) global democratic order (of which Japan and Taiwan are a part), is deeply flawed in many ways, but thus far it seems a better system than what China is selling, which is outright and unveiled autocracy and totalitarianism. Complicit in everything wrong with North Korea. It's easy to envy the efficiency of totalitarian regimes like XJ's but none of us would trade citizenship with someone living in it.
China as a geographic area was dominated by superpowers for eons, but they were relatively isolated from half the planet for most of it, separated by mountains, deserts, and oceans as they are. Their history is replete with a changing nature of what "China" was, e.g. the Kara-Khanids were not the Han, though they were an empire. It's a bit intellectually lazy or a function of over-generalization to think of China as being a continuous empire, but it's quite useful rhetorically. Chinese culture is longer-lived than any system of government it's had.
I think it's also a logical fallacy to assume that the status of being an empire is indelible. England was nothing for eons until it became arguably the greatest planet-scale empire for a relatively short time, and then it wasn't anymore. "China" has never been a planet-scale empire. Nobody is expecting the Persians to ever be a shadow of what that empire once was. I'm not sure China has a "rightful-place" more than anyone else. To presume it does also assumes that China will not balkanize over time, and that it survives intact despite its own belligerent and weaselly policies on the global stage.
We have good reason to fear and distrust the US far more, since we’re from countries that were targets of coups, sanctions, bombings or invasions.