Pass us in what respect? Technologically? Militarily?
How many nukes can China put on the US Mainland in a one hour period? How many nuclear powered subs can they put to sea at one time?
Do they have a SINGLE aircraft that can shoot down a US F-16 built in 1985?
How many Battle Groups can they put in the Gulf of Mexico and sustain them for 6 months?
Think they've figured out how to shoot down a B-2 or F-22 yet?
The only thing China is passing...is gas.
Smoke screens are a funny thing, they sometimes escape recognition as diversion. While folks are ramping up concern that China is tryign to become the lone military super power, the Chicoms are slowly becomign the prime source for the things a future globe will need if it remains technologically advanced. China will be mining the Moon sooner rather than later, and they are already hard at work buying up the resource pools in Africa and elsewhere. The Chicoms have looked at the ‘trends’ and discerned that the future power of this globe will be the controller of the resources needed to produce the advanced technologies.
You’re right, because China only has a couple of dozen ICBMs, they’re no threat to us. Perhaps the better question would be “Who has the will to use nuclear weapons?”
Their aircraft are not spectacular, but their SAM envelope is. Compare the numbers of active combat aircraft between China and the US, then ask the Germans (who had vastly superior tanks) how they fared against superior numbers of Shermans.
B-2s and F-22s don’t fare so well without satellite-guided weapons and navigation, and the country with the most active ASAT program in the world is... ? You guessed it. And as an aside, those weapons require rare-earth minerals to produce; guess who controls 92% of the rare-earth mineral leases on the planet?
China isn’t the toughest kid on the block, but it will be if things continue in the direction they are headed. While our government picks union-colored rainbows out of its own ass, the Chinese are busy hacking our military and industrial networks, building the largest and most effective spy network on the planet, taking control of strategic chokepoints, and spending hundreds of billions on 4th generation weapons.