1) Demographics will hinder China. The one child policy they have had for the last 40 or so years will leave them with one person supporting 2 elderly parents for a long time.
2)The fact that only the people on the coastal cities are anywhere near the poverty line is another.
3) The Han Chinese actively ruling over all the other dirt poor ethnicities and the resentment that breeds is yet another.
China is a long way from world domination (IMHO).
According to this:
http://piaohaoreport.sampasite.com/blog/Some-numbers-on-Chinese-demograp.htm,
you’ve got the right idea
“It is incredibly complicated to think about the economic implications of such dramatic demographic changes, but I think there are a couple of points that can be made:
China currently needs extremely high growth rates – I think I agree with Xinxin Li’s suggestion of 10% annually – in order to keep the urban unemployment rate from rising, but this pressure will abate soon. After 2010 the number of young people joining the job market will begin to drop quickly, while the number of retirees will continue growing rapidly. The combination will reduce the need for job creation on the order of 1 million jobs or more a year for several years.
In the short term this will be a good thing because it will allow China a little more room to maneuver on the jobs front and will create less pressure for breakneck growth. In the longer term of course it means that there will be a sharp drop in the number of people working – much sharper than the drop in overall population. That means workers will need higher levels of productivity to generate the same amount of per capita income.
The rapid reduction in the number of young people and the rise in the number of older people are probably good for political stability.