My metric here is "grabby success" or growth. I alluded to this in my comment but essentially, if you have a society, civilization, entity, species, w.e., it's almost guaranteed to be different in some way to other such entities.
And because effective resources are generally limited, these differences will lead to relative difference in market share, like maybe how many people one entity can sustain.
From there, it might lead to differences in how productive each person and the entity itself is, which leads to a spread of that productivity to other entities. The US has generally enjoyed the crown here for at least a hundred years - even now, cutting edge research is still in the US. The US "culture" is essentially internet culture and it will rub off on everyone who uses most US services (even innocuous ones like Google).
In sum, I'm equating long-term relative growth rate to societal/governance success. China isn't a great comparison to the US, but it's a very good comparison to, say, India (with caveats).
Over the next 50 years, I think it's a decent comparison to the US/EU as well, as the populations are now more similar (with immigration).
And because effective resources are generally limited, these differences will lead to relative difference in market share, like maybe how many people one entity can sustain.
From there, it might lead to differences in how productive each person and the entity itself is, which leads to a spread of that productivity to other entities. The US has generally enjoyed the crown here for at least a hundred years - even now, cutting edge research is still in the US. The US "culture" is essentially internet culture and it will rub off on everyone who uses most US services (even innocuous ones like Google).
In sum, I'm equating long-term relative growth rate to societal/governance success. China isn't a great comparison to the US, but it's a very good comparison to, say, India (with caveats).
Over the next 50 years, I think it's a decent comparison to the US/EU as well, as the populations are now more similar (with immigration).