You might like this chart, @Sig, from Angus Maddison, may he RIP (it's one of my favorites and I might have posted it here before):I'd use the term "catch-up" pretty loosely. US GDP per capita is $57,000, China's is $8,000, and the U.S. achieves that without the staggering levels of pollution, corruption, inequality, loss of freedom..... that Chinese face. I just have to push back on this "China is taking over the world" meme because in reality while it's made impressive strides you can't just extrapolate out the line on the graph to China ruling the world in X years as the pundits seem so fond of doing.
You could possibly argue that it's all just a reversion to the long term steady state
.