Is America a dying empire, as many foretell? Victor Davis Hanson explains in American Greatness that America continues to produce astonishing levels of food, ship construction, and industrial output.

Beijing’s miraculous 30-year leap out of poverty into first-world affluence and Westernized power is hardly the same as parity with the US. Trump held all the cards at the current summit, and VDH expects Trump to hold them again when Xi Jinping visits the US this autumn. The US leads China by sizable margins—in wealth, economic output, fuel, food, and military strength.

With a population four times that of the US, China has only about 60% of our GDP. Looking at this asymmetry, one US citizen accounts for 40 percent more goods and services than his four Chinese counterparts. Americans enjoy a per capita GDP (roughly $95,000) over six times higher than China’s (roughly $15,000).

The US is the largest gas and oil producer and exporter in history. China requires 11-12 million barrels per day.

The US is also the greatest food exporter in history.

China, for all its miraculous increases in agricultural productivity, still must import 30–40 percent of its food, a number that keeps rising as China becomes more affluent and more diverse in its food consumption.

The US spends almost three times as much on defense.

Its nuclear forces are roughly six times larger, and its 11 carrier strike groups are nearly four times more numerous than China’s three conventionally powered carriers. The US has more than 100 years of experience in carrier warfare; China has less than 15 years.

American universities’ science, technology, engineering, and mathematics departments dominate global rankings.

In terms of market capitalization, eight US companies are in the world’s top ten. American companies, along with NASA, have regained prior American primacy in space exploration. In new frontiers such as robotics, drones, artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion, cryptocurrencies, and bioengineering, a once sluggish US has woken up, rebounded, and is reasserting its preeminence.

Yes, it’s true, the US fertility rate is down to 1.7. China’s is 1.0. China faces a population that is rapidly shrinking and aging.

But most importantly, notes VDH, China is an autocracy.

It is superficially efficient, but its technology is ultimately derived from the free and wide-open atmosphere of the West and especially of the US. There are usually around 300,000 Chinese students here in the US—and they are not art history majors, but sent here to master and appropriate US scientific expertise and then return home to clone it.

It matters whether China’s ascendance will permanently continue and whether its political system, food and fuel capacity, military, and scientific community are on par with those of America.

China, like all the other US rivals of the last hundred years, VDH reminds readers, has not come close.