If China is more successful then we're rubes. Every time an article like this hits, the Western brain spasms. But…but they don’t innovate, they just copy! Bu

If China is more successful then we're rubes. Every time an article like this hits, the Western brain spasms. But…but they don’t innovate, they just copy! But…but ghost cities, Evergrande, debt spiral. Any day now it all collapses! But…but how do they even freedom? We can't believe China is eating the world because it would mean Western Civilization is contingent - that everything leading up to this point wasn't an inevitability. That we actually had a choice and got tricked into strip malls, failed governance, and life long debt. That wealth inequality wasn't actually our destiny and the people who got rich off what we built didn't actually deserve it. So we have to believe that people may ride those trains and pay with those QR codes, but deep down, their souls are yearning for suburban strip malls, CNN panel discussions, and 30-year mortgages. China has to be perpetually both failing and knocking at our doorstep because the idea that then we’re left with the intolerable truth: they actually built things that work, and we chose not to.