China vs the US - Criticisms of Spengler

David P Goldman (aka Spengler) is one of my favourite writers and thinkers.
His landmark book How Civilisations Die (and why Islam is dying too) is one of my most influential books.

However I must take issue with a few things in his latest article:
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/art-laffers-chinese-curve-ball/

He correctly points out that China has gone into huge debt to build infrastructure while there is little to show for the US's huge debt. However he fails to note that a large proportion of this Chinese spending has been completely wasteful, building empty cities and unnecessary bridge, ports etc.

He further fails to mention the huge demographic problem facing China. Its birthrate is so low that it will never have enough people to fill these empty cities. Even worse, because its working age population is already shrinking, the costs of maintaining this infrastructure against an ever shrinking tax base will eventually bankrupt it.

The US has a lot of problems (which Trump is trying to fix) but it has a few key advantages over China that make it unlikely China will ever overtake it:

1. A significantly higher birthrate and still growing working age population;
2. A far more attractive place to live - people want to come to America, but the Chinese are leaving as fast as they can (just look at Australia or Canada).
3. Freedom and Democracy, which despite the obvious failings of the US system, is still much better for encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship than the repressive, social credit scoring, one party state of China.