In some respects, little has changed in China for rhe last 5000 years or so. China - up until the West, empowered bu its Industrial Revolution - has always been a squat, three-layer society: The Imperial/military side, the Mandarin/bureaucratic side and the peasantry on the bottom. It worked for as long as it did because of a deliberate degree of inefficiency and a philosophical/religious world view that kept people in their place.
Something similar has reasserted itself - the Communist Party/PLA at the top, the new Mandarin/bureaucratic classes in the cities and the vast majority of the teeming poor peasantry still living at barerly above subsistence level in conditions we would find apalling.
Chinas new prosperity is a mile wide and an inch deep. They are far too dependent upon foreign markets, and when those falter - or dry up - there will be hell to pay. They are also only one catastrophe away from a general collapse: the failure of the Three Gorges dam. When - and not if - that goes down, it will take most of the country with it.
I have much more faith in the emerging economies of Latin America, than those in Asia. But in the Orwellian world of George Soros, perception is reality to most. Just look at Dubai, which has incredible money and power in the hands of a select few - they collasped.