I would be careful about writing off the USA if I was you. China will fail in the long-term because it is society built without any decent foundation. A society that has no democratic framework or culture, riddled with corruption, a crappy education system, and heavily reliant on foreign technology can't be great. Take away cheap labour ( and even that advantage will disappear ) and what is left? Not much if you ask me!
As for Chinese education, people like yourself who just want to play stupid games with kids and show Mr Bean are part of the problem. Sure, older laowai men move to Asia to have an easier more stress free life. However, if I'm working part-time at a university I'll do proper lesson plans, attend my classes, get paid at the end of each month. At least if the students have a decent foreign teacher they might actually learn something useful, unlike the drivel they are taught in their Chinese classes.

The U.S can probably take quite large hits and still bounce back, it not only has a high GDP per capita, but a very large population of 300 million plus. There are several countries with a mostly rich population around the world, but the vast majority of those countries are so small compared to the U.S, even Japan has only has about 120 million people and Germany only has about 80 million people, by comparison.

Not to mention, that they always seem to have something in reserve. Although there's always some arsehole in the U.S.A that has a wanton desire to destroy their own country from within, for every one of those there's also some creative little bugger out there that manages to change the world with something that they invent.

However, China can put things right and there are people who genuinely want to do that, even they never implement a democratically elected government. The recent measures taken suggest that they accept that mistakes have been made or at the very worst, they want to cover up those mistakes. They are getting less reliant on foreign expertise, but the fact that people have even recently expressed an interest in hiring somebody like me outside of ESL even these days despite there being a higher quality selection of local talent available, possibly shows that they are probably still working on it.

I am increasingly feeling negative about ESL and do intend to switch again despite this job itself not being quite so bad. But when students at my university come and tell me that they find my lessons interesting and that they want me to teach them again during the next semester, it means quite a lot to me.