There's a big difference between surpassing the US and dominating the world. To the US, not being able to at least plausibly claim to be Top Nation is an threat to your core psychological identity; to most of us it's Tuesday.
The downsides of Chinese authoritarianism are very real. I wouldn't want to live there. But the west is increasingly unable to deliver on things that are lower down on the hierarchy of needs. Crime and personal safety, infrastructure maintenance, homes within commuting distance of jobs. It's not so much that we need to dream bigger as that we need to stop sawing off our own legs with the basics.
Plus when decades of "democracy" can't deliver things the majority wants - like reduced immigration - people will rightly ask what good it is to anyone.
Democracy is only in the political arena, in the US the economy is organized as dictatorships. So it's unsurprising that the economic results are not good for the majority of people. Because all businesses are organized as dictatorships, they are not controlled by the majority of people. Same way political dictatorships did not deliver what people wanted, they deliver what dictators want.
The downsides of Chinese authoritarianism are very real. I wouldn't want to live there. But the west is increasingly unable to deliver on things that are lower down on the hierarchy of needs. Crime and personal safety, infrastructure maintenance, homes within commuting distance of jobs. It's not so much that we need to dream bigger as that we need to stop sawing off our own legs with the basics.
Plus when decades of "democracy" can't deliver things the majority wants - like reduced immigration - people will rightly ask what good it is to anyone.