Is America in Decline and China Rising? Not for Long.

A grand summit in Beijing is a natural time to assess the state of the U.S.-China competition, the dynamics of great power conflict, the balance of forces in this new Cold — or maybe just Cool? — War.

It’s also a good time to revisit my own predictions. Six years ago, in the early days of the coronavirus, I argued that rather than a “Chinese century” we might be looking at a “Chinese decade,” a window when China’s power would hit a peak and the American position would be maximally endangered — but with a more favorable balance awaiting the United States in the later part of the century, if we could get through the Chinese maximum unscathed.

One part of that analysis was simply wrong. I was writing at a moment when the American response to........

© The New York Times