China is not a peer competitor in anything except in CO2 production and lead poisoning. They are relevant only in their own backyard or other places where there is no competing influence, IE, places no one cares about.
And this is an excellent example of the strategy "deny the decline." Beta Guy here would not get elected in the US, except against another candidate denying the decline.
Some people in the US are sitting around at home with no job, and no prospect of a job - but their fathers and mothers had one. They open their door into a yard with patches of grass among the clay, and debris from the overfull rubbish bins that haven't been collected. They go for a walk along a street with grass pushing through the cracks in the unmaintained pavement running along the side of a road with chunks of asphalt pushing up and potholes in it, past closed vandalised factories, abandoned houses with all their copper and aluminium torn out, maybe just a few drug addicts living in them. They walk past old closed churches and brotherhood lodges where their parents or grandparents used to socialise and find ways to help each-other, but they might not remember that.
They hit the old downtown where the trains no longer run as often, or maybe not at all, and see that many of the shops are boarded up, and many of those remaining are payday loan places. The bigger shops are all parts of chains, like McDs and Walmart, filled with goods which are cheap but which were only touched by American hands in transit.
If they get across town they start going past places with automatic sprinklers spitting across manicured lawns, the buildings are either very new, or very old but very well-preserved, and recent migrants, both legal and illegal, are tending the garden and keeping the house in good repair, or looking after the children while the parents go to secure salaried jobs in their airconditioned offices. Some of the people in these offices are right-wing, some are left-wing, some would say the walker is just idle, some would say the walker needs the help of the state, but none of them will know the walker's name, or ever meet them socially, nor would any of them think to ask the walker, "well, what do you think is the issue?" For those in the offices, there is no issue. Right-wing or left, they just don't get it. For the salaried worker in the office with cheap stuff in the shops and cheap servants to keep the house nice, there is no issue, everything's great.
This person walking through town knows there are issues, and knows America is declining. The person in the office doesn't, except maybe the janitor. Keep denying the decline, and Trump will be re-elected in 2020, and you
still won't understand why.