and you'd have an almost verbatim rant from about 30 years ago. We Americans always need a boogeyman.

Steel is the best example of China's dumping practices just to win market share. A strategy that is unlikely to be sustainable.

Only time will tell, and I don't claim to have a crystal ball, but just as the world looks almost the opposite of what everyone thought it would w/r/t Japan 30 years ago, when you might well have said all the same things about Japan, if I have to make a bet on your mid-century prediction about China, I'd put all my chips on "not gonna happen".

China tries to operate a market based economy, but only up to a point. Property rights are dicey. Transparency is non-existent. And the govt treats the economy as though it can be walled off from the rest of society, which is still basically a repressive dictatorship. Which is why there is almost no innovation.

Which all says to me, if I really had to bet on it, that a reckoning is coming. Too many ingredients of a vibrant, sustainable economy simply aren't part of the economic soup in China, and so I doubt it will turn out well for them. I hope it doesn't turn out catastrophically bad, which is one possible outcome.