Ugh, the amount of inane babble in this thread makes me want to vomit...not to mention the extreme ignorance exercised by dark110.
Please, enlighten me how you were able to gain such insight about a country by watching one television program? You now act like an expert on the subject when clearly, you are not.
China will indeed be a superpower in the near future. Their standard of living matters not, as already proven by the former USSR. If a country focuses their energy and resources toward the greater good and its people buy in, then the well-being of the individual matters not, so long as the country as a whole is progressing. During WWII, Germany's standard of living declined rapidly, to the point that German currency was worth almost nothing. People were stuffing their fireplaces with money instead of buying logs, because it was actually cheaper to burn the money than to spend it. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.
Reasons why China will be a superpower:
1. Work ethic. Chinese work ethic is inhuman. The vast majority of its people are willing to work for a minimal amount of pay while performing dangerous and unhealthy work. They don't question it because for all they know, there is nothing better. Much of their media is censored and their views of the outside world are skewed. They don't know of better conditions. Also, it puts food on their tables. Why risk what you already have for the unknown?
2. Population. China has well over one billion people. That is 1,000,000,000 people. That's over three times the amount the US has. Also, the amount of people who are physically able to enlist in the army greatly outnumbers that the US and its allies have. Manpower alone could overpower much of the potential opposition to China should they choose to attack a country...or twelve.
3. Economy. The US owes somewhere around 8.3 trillion dollars to the World Bank. Lately, China has actually been kind enough to pay some of that debt back. Nice of them, huh? Not so much. Instead of owing money to the World Bank, we'll owe it to the Chinese government. Now, they might not demand the US to repay them in money, but in weapons, technology, or whatever else you can imagine. Think of how many stealth fighters and bombers $8,300,000,000,000 could buy you. Or, since the standard of living is so low, divide that amount of money by the population of China. You could give every person in China over $8,000. If you're making a minimal amount of money, imagine how much $8,000 could buy you. It's more than enough to persuade many people to fight for their country.
3b. An addendum to economy. If China has so much spare money lying around where they can go around buying up the US debt as they see fit, then imagine how much money they're spending internally. The Chinese economy is a powerhouse. It was mentioned that the Chinese won't become a superpower because they manufacture trinkets for minute amounts of money. Well, if China stopped producing them, it would force companies to outsource somewhere else, for more money. If other countries are spending their money unnecessarily, it prevents them from spending them in other ventures. However, think of it this way: everytime you see a "Made in China" sticker, it represents x amount of cents. Imagine how many items are manufactured in China. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of these items are produced every day. This represents millions of dollars worth of income for China as a nation on a daily basis. So while we think we're getting cheap labor, we're helping drive China's economic machine. If China were to decide they didn't need to generate that extra revenue, they could cut off all external outsourcing and it would cause a worldwide economic impact. In short, China's economy > The world economy.
4. Olympics. This really isn't a reason, but it's a bit of food for thought. After China won the 2008 Olympics, an official was quoted as saying something along the lines of "Winning the Olympics is a great step for China, but spending the money and manpower on building facilities to house the Olympics will hinder our forward progression as a nation."
Anyway, to summarize, China will become a superpower before I'm dead, provided I don't get hit by a bus on my way to work tomorrow. Also, dark110, you're ignorant. And your spelling and grammar are atrocious.
