While at this very moment they might behind militarily that's not always going to be the case, especially if they are the ones with money in the future. It is A LOT easier to catch up than it is to innovate a marginal advance in something. In most of our lifetimes they not only will have everybody owing them their debt, but they will pretty much be able to kick everybody else asses also. The only think anybody else will be able to fall back on after that is mutually assured nuclear destruction, but there are a lot of things short of that where they can make everybody else's life a living hell if they want. (Even that assuming some defense isn't built to counter act those type of weapons.)
While people might complain about how America acts, and we do some pretty wrong things around the world, what will people think will happen when some cruel, ruthless, totalitarian nation that doesn't give a damn about human rights and dignity become the dominate ***** in the world? They will have become that way because the elite here wanted to exploit the situation to make the most, the quickest, and the easiest cash.
the thing about china is that though it's developed in some aspects the majority of the country is at least a century behind so in 20 years militarily they may be a superpower (one could say they're already a military superpower) but culturally and society as a whole they'll still be way behind
They outnumber almost anybody else so badly that probably doesn't matter that much. If you want to get heartlessly practical, they don't need a lot of their people to be culturally up to everybody else. They just need them to be grunt labor or soldiers. They will have more than enough skilled people elsewhere to keep the machine running, and that's not counting the stuff they can just buy or steel. In fact having that many people behind will probably be a huge advantage. They can have a huge supply of virtual slave labor. They don't have to care that much about taking care of them or seeing past their very minimal needs for survival, and more resources can go to what the elite want. If those people don't know any better and/or are always crushed beneath the heal of a government that isn't afraid to do it does it really matter?
