Legally : US is far far ahead than China.
It has been quite a few month when US and China went to trade war. The China has pitched his 5G technology to India but India is reluctant to invest yet considering the harmful effects that it will bring.
Trump has already motivated the Companies in Silicon valley to start working on G few months back, i see by 2020 , US will be standing with his own 5G technology.
What do you mean illegally? is not they are tokenizing their own currency? from what I heard, it is legal and approved by the government.
for them it is legal but for other countries, it might be not because every country has a different set of law. And the trade war has happened for a year not just for a few months.
In term of digital currency adoption, China is ahead of the US.
But I am still a little bit skeptical about this because it brings more harm than good. This is also the reason why the US and many countries do not create anything or even ban cryptocurrency. Because it can affect their economy in some way.
for me
China: Optimism
Else: Skepticism