Comment by TacticalCoder

> China is more stable than the U.S. China is also beating the pants off the U.S. in several sectors and in the ones they're not, they're rapidly catching up.

And another big difference is that during the US/Russia space race, the US had a GDP three times the size the GDP of Russia.

Now the US's GDP is only 50% bigger than China's GDP. So nearly 200% bigger vs Russia back then and only 50% bigger vs China now: it's not the same game anymore.