China has been nipping at the heels of the United States for a quarter of a century. By some measures, the size of the Chinese economy exceeded that of the United States about a decade ago. China has a huge trade surplus thanks to the fact that it is the leading trade partner of 145 countries (about 70 percent of the world). Although the U.S. military remains globally dominant—based on extraordinary expenditures and state-subsidized research—China’s military power has been growing and now bests that of the United States in some fields, like size of navy.

At the level of society, China puts the United States to shame in terms of level of public transportation, bridges and tunnels, and other amenities. China’s high-speed Internet connectivity is much greater than the United States. Eight of the top ten universities in the world according to scientific output are Chinese.

And it’s not just Beijing or Shanghai. Dan Wang, a Canadian technology analyst, writes of his visit to Guizhou province: “China’s fourth-poorest province, I was surprised to see, had much better levels of infrastructure than one could find in much wealthier places in the United States, like New York State or California.”

China has also been investing a lot into soft power, moving up from a rather lowly eighth position in 2020 in the Global Soft Power Index to the number two spot in 2025. If you haven’t seen the movie Nhe Zha 2 or played the video game Black Myth: Wukong or bought a Labubu, then you haven’t experienced Chinese influence. But it’s capturing the imagination of your friends and your kids.

China possesses one quality above all that has put it on this upward trajectory. It is consistent—or, at least, it has been consistent since the 1990s and the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests. With the advantage of economic planning and a ruthless determination to suppress political opposition, the Chinese Communist Party has taken the country from the wild vicissitudes of the Mao era to the predictable equilibrium of the current era.

Planning, predictability, expansion of soft power—these hallmarks of current Chinese governance are the complete opposite of Donald Trump’s approach to politics and economics. And this is why 2025 will mark the turning point in the relative power of the two countries.

China isn’t just eating our lunch. The........

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