While a few provinces are doing well (Guangdong most prominently), inland China is still very backwards -- and, reportedly, increasingly disgusted with the government. The one-child policy is still enforced there, brutally; despite the almost complete lack of journalists' access to mainland China, I've heard reports of spontaneous, armed "mutinies" among the populace -- attacks on government officials, on account of the one-child policy, or over taxes, or for whatever reason.
China is less politically stable than it looks; for all we know, the next Liu Bang or Zhu Yuanzhang may have already taken to the hills. And if you think that the Chinese government can't possibly collapse _now_, that we'll never see a period of good old-fashioned Chinese interregnal warlordism in the 21st century, I remind you that we saw one in the 20th, when it was equally anachronistic and inconceivable -- the most chaotic period of the Five Races Under One Union was the 1920s, contemporary with the Wiemar Republic and _The Great Gatsby_.
Of course, China eventually becoming powerful is almost inevitable; sailormoon points out that their sheer numbers argue for that, especially when combined with a culture which, though nominally Confucian-Legalist, has a very real "go-getting" idiom. This is the other side of China: the brash, independent style of the world of mountain and river, ultimately tracing back to the xiá (侠), the knights of the feudal Zhou dynasty. It may be some time before this happens -- their current postmodern authoritarian government has to either reform or be overthrown first, I think -- but it will arrive.
For further reading, look up Boye de Mente's _The Chinese Have a Word for It_.