Ok, lets unpack that ok?

> Our nuclear energy capacity is five times that of
> China. We have four times the reactors. And the share
> of energy we get from nuclear is eight times higher.

We need to be careful not to conflate "capacity" with "know how". The average age of nuclear reactors is 34 years[1], the newest one built was in 1996 [ibid]. So assuming your lead engineer with say 10 - 15 years experience, lead the design an implementation of that newest reactor, he (and it was probably a male since they would have graduated in '86 or so) is probably retired now. What that means in practical policy terms is that the US has a lot of expertise in running reactors safely, but has pretty much lost a lot of actual hands on knowledge of building and designing reactors. It is very similar to the difference between keeping a database running that was designed and implemented years ago, and designing a new one. Those are different (both important!) skill sets. There is a tremendous amount of practical knowledge that is only achieved by building a new instance of something. That is the knowledge that China is developing, and the US has "lost".

> China hasn't come even remotely close to challenging
> the notion that Western style governance produces
> drastically better outcomes for the people.

You might come to a different conclusion if you ask the question differently, like "How many people have the Chinese pulled out of poverty into the middle class, compared to western style governance?" If you ask it in absolute numbers that way, China wins handily by pulling 680M people out of poverty [2]. That is more than 50% bigger than the entire population of the US.

> The worst managed economies of Europe, have median
> incomes higher than the bottom billion plus Chinese
> possess.

But what does the median income buy? It is easy to feel badly for someone who makes $100 a month when compared to a western environment, but if that $100 a month pays rent, food, utilities, and leaves them enough to save a bit and speculate on the stock market? It is a fallacy to try to compare poverty rates using currency exchange rates, rather you have to consider what is the cost of living in terms of labor offered. How many hours a month are needed to cover the cost of housing? food? transportation? If you're banking excess labor in the form of saving money then you're doing ok. So many people have moved up into the middle class that it is becoming a problem for China's leadership [3].

So bashing aside, this is my reasoning for why I think this announcement is good for China and challenging for the US.

China's growth has been pulling millions of people out of poverty into their middle class. Once coming out of poverty these people raise their children to be middle/upper class and give them better educations than they had. This creates a pool of much more highly skilled engineers who are start solving systemic problems. As they train this labor pool on building and deploying infrastructure that supports a more nuanced and complex economy, the Chinese economy will gain more domestic demand as part of its growth equation. The ability to bypass regulation and public comment allows the government to fund technologies as they see fit.

Nuclear energy is capable of providing 100% of the energy needs for the Chinese state if deployed in quantity, which removes any dependence on Coal or Oil for power generation, leaving available, and the labor available for other applications (plastics, chemistry, etc). Their economy moves to a service economy both on earth and in orbit, and they end up with the base resources for exploiting resources off planet that nobody else can. Unlike the US they flip on a basic income system which instantly lifts all remaining citizens out of poverty into the new state of the world, and now everyone on the planet wants to live there in their non-polluting cities, in self driven electric vehicles, working on things they care about.

Ok, so it probably won't go like that, basic freedoms are going to be a problem for them. But still, I think the moves they are making will push their economy ahead of the US. Whether or not they can keep it there will be interesting to watch given their recent "misunderstanding" about stock markets.

[1] http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=228&t=21

[2] "China (which has never shown any interest in MDGs) is responsible for three-quarters of the achievement. Its economy has been growing so fast that, even though inequality is rising fast, extreme poverty is disappearing. China pulled 680m people out of misery in 1981-2010, and reduced its extreme-poverty rate from 84% in 1980 to 10% now." -- http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-bill...

[3] http://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/... (Summer 2007)