China a superpower? not in our lifetime. let me show the truth: economically, China is not producing the world leading technolgies and products, only second rate stuffs. a large part of the Chinese outputis highly dependent on exports which will collapse if other countries demands for products is lowered. A lot of people are working at sweat-shops on long hours and low pay. militarily, China has only a few ICBMs capable of reaching USA. other missles are of low accuracy and low quality. The Navy is old and only about one tenth the size of the Japanese Navy. 90% of the Army is non-mechanized infantary. The air force is using old Russia air planes like Mig 27/30 clones J7,10/11.
superpower Power is a relative measure and its answer depends on what factors that you value as being equal to power. On a simplistic view China had become a superpower when the First Emperor took over the whole of China and committed massive genocide and destruction of culture and value. For those who are familiar with ancient to modern history globally superpower status in history had, in every case, been acquired by massive consumption of energy and natural resources and usually pre-cursored by massive genocide and by expansive of territory into neigbouring countries. For example: USA and the Red Indians (didn't you ever think that the whole of the Americas was populated by Red Indians and what happened to them?! Did you ever see a US president standing shoulder to shoulder with a Red Indian?), British Empire and the citizens around the world, Romans and the other ancient Europeans, First Emperor and the adjacent Middle Kingdom countries, Greeks under Alexander the Great, Aztecs.... All these countries had acquired powerful status by such epic scale of genocide which made the efforts of Sadam so feeble by comparison! Therefore I really don't think that China needs to further its scale of superpower. She is already a superpower from the days of the First Emperor. There was a period of weakness during the first part of the 20th Century but that was purely due to the elite few who kept the 99.9% of the population stupid and poor. The power and money went to so few people that ultimately absolute power corrupted them all absolutely. If any one can tell me a country that had acquired superpower status without the negative effects I listed above then I shall bow to your superior knowledge!
China's GDP is on the uptrend. It means that China is on the right track to become the next superpower. Go Go CHINA!
As people noted before, china's extreme economic growth usually leads most people to immediately think "inflation problems". But this isn't quite so simple. You have to understand that china's economy is structured slightly differently to a standard american like economy. It has an fixed exchange rate which many argue purposely undervalues the chinese currency. Normally history has shown that countries that forcibly undervalue their currency cannot maintain it for very long but china has managed to maintain it strangely enough. It is this reason that most economist argue contributes to china popularity in the world market. Suffice it to say that while there are a lot of other details involved, as long as china maintains a reasonably high growth rate, and tackles its poor income distribution (which by the way is slowly improving, thanks to slowly emerging middle class) its well on the path to super-poweriness.
China has small unemployment less than 1% the US has given the textile industry to them and electronics in almost there
Yup, it'll be a superpower, but its economy might collapse on itself a few times before its stable enough like the EU or USA or western economies..
Not likely I work in Shanghai as an expat for a venture capital firm. The longterm economic viability of China is something that gets discussed frequently where I work. The concensus within the venture investment circle is a compound of the following: 1. Chinese economy and political structure is extremely fragile. It is even more fragile than the dot com bust a decade ago. This can be seen in the huge price fluxuations in the Shanghai stock exchange and the housing market due to the administration in Beijing changing its mind about policies. 2. There are too many mouths to feed. Even if China were able to sustain a higher Gross Domestic Product than Japan or the US, it would need to be at least 3-4x higher to be able to afford the same standard of living those in economically prosperous countries are accustomed to. 3. The overall business know-how and savy is non-existant. Where will the economic leaders come from? Who will train them? How do you undo 20+ years of communist education that preaches that it is the right for the poor to take from the rich - by force if necessary - not by hard/smart work. 4. The gap between rich and poor is worse than anything seen since the Western industrial revolution. Beijing sells the rhetoric that the Chinese middle class is growing. The reality is that the general populace is actually getting poorer. The overall GDP and money in flow is vastly larger than a decade ago but it is mostly hoarded by the very small percentage of rich. The general populace simply can't keep up and will continue to struggle to make ends meet. 5. Underemployment is a huge problem in China. There are 300,000-400,000 engineering graduates every year. Only 10-15% actually are hired to perform comparable duties. 6. The one child policy has helped China start growing at a frenzied rate. It is a Catch22, however. The full effects of this short sighted policy will be felt in the next 10-20 years when the number of elderly (retired/non-working) mouths to feed exceeds the actual number of income earners. 7. The rate of growth is unnatural. This indicates that there is wide spread speculation. The actual valuation is grossly inflated. 8. Banking and exchange regulation is poor. The safe guards adopted in the West to prevent the Great Depression from ever happening again are non-existant in China. The market will crash someday in China. 9. The RMB is severely undervalued. Continuation of undervaluation will spiral inflation out of control (if it isn't already). Correction of the RMB will undercut the competitiveness of the China market.
I think China will struggle abit in the next 20 years because of the large percentage of the population retiring there will be alot of mouths to feed, but after that they should slowly improve to being a more developed country. But you have to say they have done very well in the last 20 years. Go Go Go CHINA!
China is growing fast and it has a lot more potential for growth! Hopefully we'll see the day where China can stand on par with the US's economy and technology.
With such rapid unsustainable economic growth occuring, I feel the gap between the rich and the poor is widening which may not be beneficial in the long run as it may lead to a poor quality of life for the majority of the population. This may inhibit China's ability to become the next super power
