China has been using the last 19 years to do just that, building out their infrastructure and R&D (and in other countries, too, see the Belt and Road initiative) while the US has bogged itself down in the middle east. In 2003 when the US went to war in Iraq, the US GDP was 8 times the size of China's. Today the US GDP is 1.4 times China's. The Chinese economy has grown 24 times over in the last 25 years. The US economy has about tripled (a little less) in that time.