Well hegemony is not really a realistic goal for China, even if we wanted it.
We are starting from behind, we lack enormous amounts leverage in terms of established hard power (economy/military) and soft power (diplomacy/media). Even if we increase our power exponentially, the established powers/alliances in the world can balance us pretty easily.
We'll never reach the status of a unipolar superpower, there are too many other major players/alliances, and a limited amount of resources on Earth for our economic expansion.
So hegemony is not really "realistic" for us, that's why we have this policy. Our official goal is to seek a "multi-polar world" in which we are only one of the poles. That's something which is actually achieveable in practical terms, from our point of view.