[magicnubs]

There do seem to be parallels to America's rise to the dominant global power. In particular, they have so much of the global manufacturing infrastructure, like the US did after WW2 destroyed much of Europe's, and I don't see a way for the US to compete with China's cheap labor and agglomeration economies. And they are generating more and more of the research in high-value sectors, kind of like the US scooping up all of the physicists during the war.

There are other roadblocks that the US didn't have to be sure, their very top-heavy population pyramid and they have less arable land (which probably doesn't matter so much except in wartime or as a national security concern). It still feel like the only things that might derail the current trends are internal social unrest or a major war.