When the US achieved sole super power after WW2 she should have studied the Story of Silk vs leaving the US economic strategy to private corporations/banks. American business men practice short term profit and concentrate solely on corporate/self interest at exclusion to all other long term issues. Everything and anything will be off shored if possible based just on cost. I remember during the energy crisis of the 1970’s Americans were waiting in gas lines, oil companies were exporting US oil because on the oil exchanges, overseas markets were willing to pay more for the oil. China is pushing a different business model that a number of emerging nations are looking at. China practices capitalism tempered by strategic needs. This is in line with China’s historical past with silk and how they managed this unique technology bringing centuries of wealth (and with it social stability and means to support a powerful military). China intends to guard her technical and resource advantages, while the US elites would sell it to the highest bidder to benefit the few at the top of society leaving the rest in society endangered if a crisis should happen. There are freepers who would pooh pooh this notion, but let us compare. After twenty short years of narrowly focused US capitalism in the hands of corporations/bankers versus Chinese capitalism tempered by strategic needs, which nation has the cash surplus, which nation is fully employed and which nation has secured resources for their industries? Let me throw another issue on the table, how long will US democracy last if their people are impoverished and how long can the Chinese authoritarian state last as the Chinese middle class grows with the economic expansion? It would be ironic the US becomes less free due to declining wealth and China is under pressure to be more free as her population is well fed, fully employed and growing richer each year.
It has not been a sole superpower after WW2; it has become such 50 years later, after the demise of the Soviet Union.
"leaving the US economic strategy to private corporations/banks."
No company on earth is responsible for economic strategy.
"American business men practice short term profit and concentrate solely on corporate/self interest at exclusion to all other long term issues."
That is a common misconception. You assume that (i) long-term issues are known and (ii) corporations simply ignore them. The truth is, people cannot predict the future beyond a couple-of-years horizon. The fist assumption is therefore false. It true that socialist regimes, such as those in Europe, pretend that a committee comprised of a few Ph.D.s can come up with a long-term plan. How come, then, they are so much behind the U.S.? How come their unemployment is consistently, for decades, is much higher than ours? If our banks are at fault, how come the socialists in Europe did not avoid the same crisis? Spain suffers now from 20% unemployment vs. 9.5% ours, and their housing crisis is as deep or deeper --- what happened to their long-term knowledge of "issues?"
The only difference between capitalist and socialist managers is that the former, unlike the latter, do not pretend to know far into the future. American businesses focus on short-term result because nobody knows that long-term results are. And they have been achieving better results for centuries in part because they do so.