Is China the Future?

Do you think China's locus of power comes from the history, or from the fact that they're more centralized planning? And maybe we could even argue that other states are just essentialized, but in the notion of centralization, or is it a combination of both? It's a weird mentality that they have, because like we just simply can't appreciate what the 20th century was like for mainland Chinese people. Like there's not much drive beyond doing what is necessary to get by and I hate to be too critical of our culture.