http://www.cato.org/pubs/trade/tpa-003.html
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20010313ts.html
The Kieretsu are similar to the communists in that they are a command economy, except in reverse situations. For China, the communists/politicians control the banks and most of the large companies/manufacturers, when they say lend/build, money is lent and stuff is built, regardless of the economic allocation of resources. For the Kieretsu, industrial barons that effectively control the government, when they want cheap money or stuff built, they tell the politicians to do it and the politicians do it.
Both are command economies, just in different ways. Both were thought to have the inevitable destiny of eclipsing the US within a small timeframe, neither will.
70% of China's GDP is from construction, comparatively speaking that number was less than 10% during the housing bubble in the US. Entire cities are being built with nobody to use or live in them. Entire train systems are being built to nowhere with nobody to use them.
China superior technologically? Hardly. They can't even buy Russian fighter jets and make their own engines for them without having the engines blow up. Their only model of economics is the copy/paste one and they aren't even good at it. The German high-speed trains they copied aren't as good.
Some loons on SeekingAlpha were going on about how technologically advanced China was with their uber-super computer which used "homegrown" technology. I laughed at them, showing how it was built with Nvidia and Intel chips.
They are good at low skill repetition.
Even if China surpassed the US on a PPP basis (which I doubt it will and, as mentioned before, PPP isn't the best measurement), it won't stay there long.