They've steered a massive ship (and its crew) well enough to corner the manufacturing market for everything, globally, in less than 30 years. They've steered that same ship well enough to create mirror (and sometimes superior) industries in pretty much everything else. They also created global soft power in the process.
If they need to retool/manage gig work, the command and control economy in China has a much better chance at figuring it out than waiting for the "hand of the market" in US.
The US, for the record, also steered it's economy well enough during Covid. But that was a 2016 Trump administration, which still had adults in the room, and a 2020 Biden one.
Post 2024-MAGA isn't able to steer a bicycle.
The first world didn't win the cold war despite doing these things, but because those things actually helped us (all of us, not just the US) course-correct in ways the USSR didn't.
If China has a different way to be flexible, or if the USA looses its flexibility, the USA will fail to keep up with China in the same way and for the same reason the USSR couldn't keep up with the USA.