Yes, every external force that has influenced the US is unique in some dimension.
To me the biggest difference between China and Japan is that China is much more likely to challenge the US among all dimensions of power, whereas my understanding of Japan in the 80s is that they simply started to be slightly competitive in an economic dimension.
So I do think that there is a higher likelihood that China’s rise opens up more debates about certain deep assumptions we have in the US than Japan’s did. And some of these may be about the primacy of private property. Private property is not a law of physics but it is a very deeply set assumption we have. The idea that housing is an investment more than it is a human necessity is something that may be worth questioning more and more. If investor owned housing in the US keeps trending up (already around 20%) then at some point it will likely be helpful to have another successful system to point at and learn from for solutions.
To me the biggest difference between China and Japan is that China is much more likely to challenge the US among all dimensions of power, whereas my understanding of Japan in the 80s is that they simply started to be slightly competitive in an economic dimension.
So I do think that there is a higher likelihood that China’s rise opens up more debates about certain deep assumptions we have in the US than Japan’s did. And some of these may be about the primacy of private property. Private property is not a law of physics but it is a very deeply set assumption we have. The idea that housing is an investment more than it is a human necessity is something that may be worth questioning more and more. If investor owned housing in the US keeps trending up (already around 20%) then at some point it will likely be helpful to have another successful system to point at and learn from for solutions.