40% of the Chinese fleet are literally built over the last 4 years

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/05/china/china-world-biggest-navy-intl-hnk-ml-dst/index.html

Meanwhile has a lot of ships that are more than 30 years old like the ticonderoga class cruisersfacing decommissioning but doesn't have the building capacity to replace them

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/10/us-navy-shipbuilding-sea-power-failure-decline-competition-china/

I'm not the one living in an alternative reality, our reality have moved on from the time where US is far more power than everyone else combined. Sure the Chinese are still not as powerful as the US Navy overall. But they are more powerful than the Americans when they are fighting in their own backyard while the US needs to travel thousands of miles to fight them