Elbridge Colby has a compelling piece over at the American Compass setting out the stakes if China comes to dominate the Asian and then the world economy:

Think how the American-born internet supported Silicon Valley, and vice versa, leading to a World Wide Web governed by formal laws and informal norms almost entirely of American design. Think how the desire for access to American capital markets gives American regulators de facto control over global accounting standards, or how the need to transact with American institutions allows U.S. Treasury officials to freeze the assets of designated targets anywhere in the world. Think how Americans take for granted that English is the universal language and that everyone accepts dollars. Think how the American university degree has become the preeminent global academic credential, with searching implications for everything from global educational standards to measures of professional success.
Now think instead of the yuan as the reserve currency of the globe and the dollar supplanted, with China rather than the United States enjoying that “exorbitant privilege.” China’s central bank, not America’s, would set the global economy’s tempo. Think of China’s sanctions power equaling America’s today. Think of China dominating fractious and economically anemic Europe as well, with Beijing acting as gatekeeper and term-setter for access to the enormous market of Asian consumers. Standing alone in comparison to such a dominant China, America would no longer be the decisionmaker; it would have to conform to China’s preferences.
And forget lobbying Congress to change how social media companies are regulated; Americans would have to petition Chinese officials and regulators, with far less chance of accountability, let alone hope of success. Today’s internet has been decisively shaped by the United States, with its strong preference for open and broadly “liberal” ideas. Europe, meanwhile, focuses on privacy protections. Yet the People’s Republic of China values neither. Beijing represses speech on its own internet and allows little if any privacy protection. If China set the rules of the internet, Beijing would naturally tend to shape them in such directions. The same would go for everything from surveillance to speech controls to banking. It already uses technology, including facial recognition, big data, and artificial intelligence to impose and police so-called “social capital” scores for its own citizens. Why would famously nationalistic China treat foreigners more leniently?
Instead of being the world’s great large economy, the pinnacle of mass prosperity, and the master of its own fate, America would become something much less. We would likely remain more prosperous than many countries, but we would live under China’s economic shadow. Chinese companies would gobble up or render dependent American — and European, Japanese, and South Korean — companies, leaving America’s economic fortunes to be decided upon in China. China could insist on labor, information, regulatory, environmental, and legal changes that decisively shaped Americans’ lives. The professional and probably much of the personal lives of Americans would be shaped — if not determined — by Chinese leaders.