> You don't need global consumer brands when your country is the size of China.
Need? I guess not. But I think the point is that those things manifest themselves in a healthy market/economy/society, a healthy innovative market. If you're not advancing technologically, then you have no hope for your future. And that's what companies like Samsung, Toshiba, and Sony all do (in the electronics industry). They innovate. That innovation breeds more innovation and lays the groundwork/framework for future innovation.
That's China's biggest problem right now; they relied so much on theft of IP that they lack the infrastructure to innovate on their own. They're stuck on a ledge and can't go any higher without either technological handouts or stealing more IPs. Unfortunately for China, companies are becoming much better at protecting themselves having learned from past mistakes.
China is essentially the world's factory. That's all, nothing more, nothing less. That's all they will ever be until they climb down from their ledge and start climbing up again (starting over from scratch).
> They have 15% of the world's population
And? not sure how this is relevant. If anything, it's even more incriminating; they have that many people but so little to show for it. So little genius, so little innovation, so little advancement... It's proof that their current social, economic and political system has been a failure. They should be trouncing everyone. But they aren't.
> Corruption is being cleaned up
Their "corruption clean-up" has been just lip service. You'll note it was published first from China's own government-ran news agencies (Xinhua).
If you look at transparency international's corruption index (here: https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results) you'll see that they actually dropped 20 places from 2013 to 2014. Their corruption actually got worse, not better.
> we've never seen what happens when a large country "awakens" in the age of globalization.
Unfortunately, China's a long way from awakening.