If you're looking for a turning point, it was fall of 2001 with the 9/11 attacks and China's accession to the WTO. The USA became distracted and the 00s were the time when China's economy grew like gangbusters.
Turning point for China, yes. The turning point for the USA was as late as the Reagan administration dismantling the country for profit, though the seeds were planted earlier.
Speaking for myself I’m happy that many millions of people got lifted out of crushing poverty in Asia. I think it’s a good thing that the economy in the PRC started producing fewer famines and more of a middle class.
The part I’m less happy about is whatever point the Western economies began working less well for most people in them.
Even serious economists have trouble being rigorous about this sort of thing, so I won’t even try. But I don’t think I’m the only one with a queasy feeling that Eastern elites seem to be admitting more people to the middle class while Western elites seem to be pushing people out of it. In spite of there being powerhouse economies in both systems.
People love to nitpick this stuff to pimp whatever dumbass Ayn Rand thing, but people outside the elite in the West seem to be doing worse over time, and that is not how you get an economy that is and feels fair, that’s not how you make sure the talent rises to the top, that’s not how you get a financial system that isn’t a ripoff, that’s not how you get a government that gets shit done, that’s not how you get a military that buys good weapon systems at a compelling price point.
>But I don’t think I’m the only one with a queasy feeling that Eastern elites seem to be admitting more people to the middle class while Western elites seem to be pushing people out of it.
I agree with this and everything in your comment but that specifically doesn't really make me queasy. I'm glad that the elites of some countries still seem focused on creating positive outcomes for their citizens, even if some in the West may want to quibble about the nature of those outcomes.
What gives me the queasy feeling is reading threads like this on HN where the top comments discuss the "security risk" of Chinese nationals/ABCs in American STEM fields (the parent makes the distinction of those fields related to national defence, but replies do not) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28334051, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28332562) and the general preponderance of what I consider extremely shortsighted, low-info, and jingoistic comments. It's frightening. It's possibly hyperbolic but these comments about "security risk" in particular seem to carry the shadow of internment camps.
My basic queasy feeling is that certain western elites may be sleepwalking into something very bad here. I really hope that this feeling I have is just that mid-pandemic feeling of living through history in the making, but metastasized into areas where it doesn't belong.
edit: the comments I refer to are I guess a microcosm of the fact that China hawkishness in all its forms is one of the very few bipartisan issues in US politics right now. I'm not American, and again, this makes me very uneasy.
I read something pretty interesting recently that pretty much convinces me that the folks at the top get there by luck rather than merit. Obviously I'm sure that they themselves would disagree but I'm talking about them, not to them.
The US got to the position it is in the 20th century by luck, we discovered a new world with wealth to exploit, took the country from the indigenous, then had a stack of decades with slavery, then took that momentum into the world wars, coming out on top into the boom years when our competitors were saddled with rebuilding ruins.
If we're in decline then its our own undoing, heck we pretty much inherited the best deal in the world and pissed it away.
