Tinapples wrote:America is #1 in terms of superpowers, China is a high and rising industrial power. Leader in clean coal technology. described by Forbes; Hu is number two (it even rhymes.) Is China next in line? If you believe this is true how long until China overtakes the US?
First off, I would say that China currently is a superpower, as are the US and possibly Russia (as a result of its military parity with us), but regarding the status of global hegemony I see no reason the US will not be number one.
China is incapable of replacing the US and rising to the number one spot within the next 50 years at least. The fact is that in China, a nation that's going to have more old people in 20 years than we have
people, has no infrastructure to deal with the elderly. Now the US has very poor care for its elders as well, but the major difference here is that Chinese culture puts the elderly much higher on a social ranking, and responsibility for care of the elder falls to the younger generation. When China doesn't come up with a solution to its old people problem, and they won't because it's far too late to fix now, they're going to be facing revolution. This alone won't drive the Chinese people to rebellion, but you can see over the last 40 years how the Chinese government has been facing resistance all along. We saw some relatively progressive movements from the Chinese over the last decade, but they have reversed a lot of that policy and certainly ruined their sentiment. Cracking down once more on an overburdened (especially in 2030 when the 300-400 million Chinese elderly can't work anymore) populace is simply not going to work for China, and whether or not they will have an actual revolution or massive shift towards introspective police actions still bring one result: China will not be able to put in place an effective international infrastructure to be the next hegemonic power.
At the point where China falls out of runner-up, we're left with a motley crew, Russia, who will most likely ally with the US against China and/or other powers, India, who refuses to accept foreign investment and faces an internal crisis that threatens their stability, the EU, who lack any form of centralization or desire to take up the hegemony, and Brazil, and well Brazil is quite simply a ludicrous option.
As far as the next 50 years go, the US will see continued hegemonic status and total dominance of world affairs that we've enjoyed over the last century. After 2060 it's very hard to predict anything solid, but it's possible that that would be the turning point in shifts of power away from us.