>> It's still unclear whether China will be able to achieve technological parity, but it's quite probable it will overtake the US as the foremost economy this century.
China is already #1 by GDP (PPP) with ~$23 trillions [1]. US is #2 with ~$19 trillions (numbers are from 2017). So here China already overtook US.
If you look at nominal GDP, then US is #1 with ~20 trillions and China is #2 with ~14 trillions [2]. With the government and political system that US currently has it will take very short amount of time for China to close this gap as well.
Another metric that shows that China will continue having growth in near future is human capital. China's school education system is better, they have number of pretty good universities, state supports STEM. Yes, they have a lot of problems, but they have good human capital to solve them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...