The US is "the ship of Theseus"'ing itself, replacing parts that have worked in the past, but are no longer serving the ruling class to their satisfaction, with parts (policies) plagiarised from China that do better serve the ruling class.

Carefully selected to keep the ship distinctly itself, but still ever so slightly different each time.

(I just like the irony of plagiarising policy from China as a parallel to their plagiarising IP from the US - and likely elsewhere).