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Unlikely. I think India is the most likely candidate, or perhaps Brazil if they can keep inflation under control. Europe, Japan, and the U.S. will be dragged down by their aging populations, the high number of retirees to workers, absence of interest in learning science and technology (25% of MIT's graduates work on Wall Street... so who's going to build new tech?), and over-emphasis on celebrity lifestyle (I once heard Bill Gates' popularity in China likened to Britney Spears).

Reasons that China Won't Become a Superpower
1)
Gender Imbalance. Check out the Economist article "Gendercide" http://www.economist.com/node/15606229. About 80 million Chinese men won't find wives because the guy/girl ratio is so out of kilter. This might sound trivial, but the great evolutionary biology book Why do attractive people have more daughters? postulates that polygamist cultures are typically more violent because men's testerone levels don't drop (as they typically do after they have kids). The book puts this forward as a potential cause of instability in the middle east.

2) Not enough resources. The book Collapse (by the author of Guns, Germs, Steel) says it has been a foregone conclusion within military circles for the past decade that there are not enough resources/raw materials in the world for China to attain the same standard of living as the west. If China gets even close, inflation will hit everyone (which we have seen repeatedly over the past few years), although it will hit China and the third world harder than the West. Why, you ask? Because in western countries your rent, and cost of services eats up the majority of your paycheck rather than food and material goods (the opposite is true in China and emerging economies).

3) Environmental Costs. The book Ecocide: USSR details how the Soviet Union destroyed its long term productive capacity by over-exploiting the environment. Want an example? They diverted the fresh water tributaries of the Aral Sea so the sea level dropped, which raised the salinity and killed everything that lived there. To condense most of the book into one sentence for you: "You can achieve phenomenal growth by prostituting your environmental resources, but eventually, the cost of pollution, undrinkable water, and a sickly work force will catch up with you." If you still don't believe me, the Chinese government said publicly that environmental damage was draining 10% of GDP.

I also had to laugh this week when I read that China wants to divert water in the south (where they have lots of it) to the north (where they don't have enough). I laughed because the USSR said exactly the same thing thirty years ago, and it was a complete bust.

4) Bank insolvency. Banks are holding all of the debt in the Chinese property bubble, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304906004576367121835831168.html
loan delinquency is skyrocketing (but Chinese banks don't write-off the debt after 4 months like western banks do), and you can't become a superpower if your financial house is in shambles.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/204108-thoughts-on-china-s-insolvent-state-banks
Even more of a problem is that when these bubbles pop, construction stops, which means that cement production, steel consumption, etc. all drop.

5) Entrepreneurial Class. China has virtually no entrepreneurs (at least when compared to India). Most of the "success" stories are state enterprises that turned 'private' like China's four largest banks (all of which are still controlled by the government). Where was the $4,000 car invented? India. Where were ethanol fueled cars deployed? Brazil. Why would you ever invent something in a country where everyone would steal your intellectual property in a millisecond?

6) China is no longer the low cost producer. Vietnam is.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,553301,00.html
After Foxconn was deluged with bad press over their workers, they doubled salaries. Putting that example aside, Wired shows that average wages increased from 50 cents to $1.25 over the past 5 years. The free lunch in China is over.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/ff_madeinamerica/2/

7) Water shortage. China is redirecting rivers toward Beijing so they don't run out of drinking water. The last issue of MIT Technology Review also showed the amount of water required for different types of energy production. China's forecasted energy demands ALONE will leave them short on water.

8) China isn't the first country to try to become a superpower. Japan was supposed to own everything post-80's, but their economy got stuck. To date, South Korea is the only country to go from rice farmers to genetic engineers in 50 years, and that was only with the near incestuous help of the United States.

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