China is successful because Xi learned from his dictartor predecessors' mistakes and ran a smarter economy. Since America runs on a two party system and no one has full control, it's easy for enemies to swoop in and sabotage economic operations, which would never happen in China bc of the dictatorship. This does not mean we need to switch to a dictatorship (however, I do believe the two party system is also unhelpful bc no one can see past the parties anymore - arguments boil down to "My side good, your side bad.")
It means Americans need to take responsibility for the freedoms they have and learn actual history so they can avoid mistakes done from the past. In China, anything that might question their government is banned. They banned an MCU movie bc for a fraction of a second, a newspaper was shown in the top left of the screen and the newspaper is run by anti-communists. They banned Uncle Roger (an Asian comedian) bc he made fun of the government. Nothing that might make you question the Supreme Leader is permitted. None of that happens here, but we take it for granted. Our country was founded on the principle that self governing people should be free to pursue their dreams and live life to the fullest. The problem now is our culture is full of people who cannot self govern, so the government fails, and then communists come in and claim that since the government isn't working, you should try their system instead, when they're half the reason people can't self govern in the first place.
The reason I'm saying any of this is because if the American public knew half of what economics even is, we'd be far more successful than China still. Since we don't, we have people voting for terrible policies and people who print record money and then send billions to help other countries (or simply just self sabotage) while our own people are starving and suffering. If people weren't trying to actively implode our economy we wouldn't be in this mess. And if the public knew how ppl affect economies, we wouldn't vote these people in.