The third one and forth one, please elaborate on what you consider improvement and bench marks sir
#1 country is typically based on four (or more legs).
1. Economic improvement and status
2. Military improvement and status
3. Social improvement and status
4. Political improvement and status
China is going towards the economic improvement for sure. It is also easy to gain military status with economic improvement (at least partially).
So what about the remaining two legs?
My limited reading shows that it takes centuries to gain social and political status.
For china it will be doubly difficult. Smaller countries can experiment with social and political setup and get away with it.
But to change political and social setup of billion plus people!
So what is political and social improvement?
it means how that country deals with diversity including racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious etc.
And how such diversity and associated different thoughts and ideas impact the way people live, work, and interact. This is what I meant with social improvement. Chinese being very large Han majority is working fine now. But to be number 1, they have to become much more diverse ethnically so people from all over the world will move in out of china, live and work there for long time. If this doesn't happen, then China will remain close #2 or #3 but never #1
Similarly political improvement must deal with diverse political ideas and open to change relatively quickly. So far China is a single party closed system. This again will be great if China remains one of the lesser powers. A factory of the world, but not a true #1 power of the world.
this discussion off course is very brief, and thus you may have many questions. And that's OK.
peace