There's no way you can say Japan today has the same status it had in the 80s. It's nowhere near as powerful as what people thought it would be.

edit: If you want to see a really bearish outlook for Japan, see the issues with their population decline. If they don't figure out marriage, birth rates, or immigration, they will have a lot of problems in the future. They're already having problems. I think Japan will figure it out. But no way you can say that Japan currently looks like it has a good future.

https://qz.com/1295721/the-japanese-population-is-shrinking-...

https://www.businessinsider.com/japan-fertility-crisis-2017-...

https://www.ft.com/content/75cb43e2-d4f7-11e8-a854-33d6f82e6...

And if immigration becomes the solution, Japan just becomes more of a cultural term, rather than an ethnic term. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but Japan already tried to do that before, and gave up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigra...

But here they go again, and again for mostly less skilled work, I guess.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2018-08-03/jap...

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/15/683224099/as-japan-tries-out-...

Yeah I think I agree with all that, I think I just have a kind of pedantic point that getting to 2019 Japan from 2019 China would be a net positive.

Heh, it might, I guess we just have different goal posts of how to measure China's success in the world. I think most Chinese people would be disappointed if they end up like 2019 Japan, I think their own hopes are to be on equal footing with the US.