We’re still rolling over in laughter at this headline earlier this week in The New York Times:

China increasingly casts itself not as a fading civilization trying to catch up to the West but as a superpower poised to surpass it. Chinese nationalists and state-linked commentators say they have Mr. Trump to thank. America under his rule, they say, validates Mr. Xi’s worldview centered on “the rise of the East and decline of the West.”

For decades, many Chinese viewed the United States with a mix of admiration, envy and resentment. America represented wealth, technological sophistication and institutional confidence. Even critics of Washington who reviled the American system often assumed that it worked.

Mr. Trump’s ascent and his volatile second term shattered that image.

We wonder if The New York Times is now an arm of China’s propaganda news agency.

Let’s see how the China stock market has fared over the past 12 years versus the U.S.:

We don’t underestimate the Chinese economic and military threat. The 20th century taught us that totalitarian nations are dangerous and predatory. But if the U.S. expands economic freedom and the Chinese keep relying on central planning, the Chinese will never become the world economic superpower. Only the AOCs and the Zohran Mamdanis can slow us down.