It's funny because westerners actually seriously believed that. I had a teacher years ago tell us that China would never become the #1 economy in the world when they were starting to close in with the US. There seemed to be a generational divide because I feel like everyone in class had a "what are they talking about" look on their face.

Now, I think that the US of A won't even be able to copy China's innovations, so there's that.