America didn't decline. It just went global.

This is not to deny that China’s rise has been extraordinary, but we have to go beyond national accounts to understand what’s going on. Basically, China’s economy has a two-tier structure: One tier is state-dominated and closed to foreign (or even private Chinese) competition, and the other is more or less open. In many of the latter sectors, American firms already dominate, so in this sense the rise of China actually increases American power and influence as these companies become increasingly embedded in Chinese society. As for the nationally protected sectors, China has risen rapidly mainly in those sectors that are state-dominated (banking; construction; forestry, metals and mining; oil and gas; telecommunications), but these sectors are largely contained within Chinese borders, and their Chinese state-owned enterprises don’t compete with American transnational firms abroad (oil and gas being a notable exception).

But if we now live in the age of globalization and these companies operate all over, then can we really count them as American power? Yes, because they are still ultimately owned by American citizens — of the top 100 U.S. transnational companies, on average more than 85 percent of their shares are owned by Americans. Thus, an incredible 42 percent of the world’s millionaires are American (as opposed to 4 percent Chinese), and more than 40 percent of the world’s household net worth is based in America. That the global share of U.S. GDP has declined to less than a quarter since the 2008 crash simply reveals how global American corporate power has become.

But this also drives increasing inequality in the United States, one of the defining issues of our age, from Occupy Wall Street to “The Hunger Games” to President Barack Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address.