China - The United States of the 21st Century?

I've been thinking about this for a while. As the US finds its economy faltering, and its wars abroad gradually becoming unsustainably expensive, China is positively soaring with an economy that is booming, and arguably an aggressive desire to advance themselves.

In the latter half of the 20th Century, we saw the post-WWII era United States being similarly successful both economically, but also in their desire to stretch beyond where they once were. The space programs were something of a hallmark for showcasing progress. Somewhere after the Challenger disaster in the 1980s, the US relegated its space programs to the back seat, starving them for funds and questioning the value of the results (mostly because it seems that neo-con politicians can't see beyond the end of their fiscal noses).

Fast forward 25 or so years, and we see the US economy in shambles, its manufacturing sector mostly gutted as the holy grail of the "free market" has moved most manufacturing offshore and public education levels dropping dramatically. (The legacy of Reaganomics?)

On the flip side of the coin, we see China aggressively growing their capabilities, and spending huge amounts of money on the kind of space exploration programs that NASA can only dream of.

Does the first half of the 21st Century belong to China in much the same way that the latter half of the 20th belonged to the United States? It's hard to say for sure, but at the moment, it looks to me as if the US has a deep canyon to climb out of while China is aggressively beginning to assert itself as a power to be reckoned with both politically and economically.