As I said, you are what you grow up in. The current generation still live in a poor and weak China. That's what they know. They don't live in a China that is 3 times bigger than US in GDP and has the best and biggest military in the world. If China achieves that level of power, the new generation born in say 2060 will not be as humble as today's generation. Their desire will be different.
If you believe in realist theory you must think not in 10 years term. You must think in terms of 100s, thousands of years. You have to look at the big picture.
What is the big picture. The big picture is that China used to be a tiny civilization that was limited to the yellow river valley. What is considered southern China now, AKA Shanghai used to be the homeland of Vietnamese and Thai people. Chinese people expanded their power, they were better than their neighbors. And they slowly expanded and controlled them, kicked them out, assimilated them. The evidence of these expansions are present in Chinese DNA.
I think China and Chinese people are one of the most successful and powerful people in history. They are not done expanding. Can you imagine a future 500 years from now where Australia is Chinese land full of Chinese people and all the white Australians kicked out or assimilated and speaking Chinese?
Yes, that kind of future is possible if China continues to be powerful and rest of the world becomes weak and easy to exploit. I can imagine a future where Chinese people dominate not just East Asia. But they are the dominant people in many other parts of the world. Just like how Europeans did.
And even Europeans are not the original inhabitants of Europe. If you know history, Indo-European language family has original homeland in central Asia. They expanded into India and also expanded into Europe. This same group speaking a single language came to dominate so much land.
History is full of groups and people expanding or dying. Some groups become very successful and expand their land and influence in huge areas. Some are so unlucky that they get assimilated or even completely destroyed.
I think China and Chinese people are a group that have so many advantages that they will expand much much more. They will dominate entire East Asia. can I be wrong? Sure. But that is what future historians will find out 500 years from now.
