TL;DR: While you folks have been busy thumping your chests and lecturing the rest of the world about how great and "free" you are non-stop (yes, we heard you the first 100 times and no offence, but most of the world really doesn't care as much as you seem to think they do, but enjoy your self-congratulatory wankfest anyway and drink a freedom toast on us), building bombs and trying to topple every foreign regime and their grandma to show how big your wieners are (while you're busy shrieking and beating each other up over the definition of said wieners and banging on incessantly about rainbow flags and evil globalist Islamic takeovers and conspiracies), China has been quietly buying up everything in sight all across the globe, massively investing in both old-fashioned fossil fuels as well as green and future tech and infrastructure, planning ahead, and becoming the country the world depends on for those little gadgets we all like.
(Helps when you can save some of your budget by not engaging in foreign military campaigns every 5 minutes that destabilize entire regions, displacing millions of people and leading to humanitarian (or "migrant") crises and the formation of new global terror threats to fill the power vacuum.) And this from a country run by a freaking authoritarian Communist regime with a terrible human rights record (maybe even as bad as yours). Sure, they like to go on about Taiwan, but they haven't actually done anything yet or dropped bunker busters on the Taipei skyline. And if I'm not mistaken, and leaving aside cyber warfare and so on, the last time China was engaged in an overt foreign military conflict was... 1979.
Unlike the US, which seems to have been in a state of virtual permawar or involved in overseas military interventions (both overt or otherwise) for *checks notes* over 80% of your very short lifespan as a nation. Talk about childhood growing pains. Let us know when you finish puberty as a country and calm down a bit, hey? We get it, growing up is hard. We've all been there so don't sweat it. Gotta get that testosterone out somehow. (Maybe take up kickboxing or go for a jog instead?)
Also better get mining, folks. And learn how to smelt titanium ore and process phosphorus in your backyard. At least you'll still have eggs.
PS This is what us foreign enemy types term "sarcasm" and "banter". We know it often goes over your heads (in those airplanes made with imported precious materials from your enemies). So chill.