Have they ever not been? I think through history China always have been a superpower (with some short exceptions).
Edit: this might have been the longest time China was not a superpower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
Edit: this might have been the longest time China was not a superpower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
The industrial revolution pushed "the west" pretty far in terms of power/economics but there were thousands of years of human history prior to it. In that longer view of history, China has always been a major player, and the last 150-ish years have been a fluke that's being corrected.
But western journalism really treats everything prior to the industrial revolution as caveman times, meaning they'll be equally surprized seeing Iran (Persia), India, Turkey and others 'rise' up in the coming decades as well.
That's one way to look at it. The other would be to yield to the continuum a bit, to see that growth (technological, military, economic) usually doesn't happen overnight. Even if Iran were on the cusp of again being a world power, it wouldn't happen overnight.
So, while they lost their head start, at least they have that...
However, painting the West’s ability to heap “unequal treaties” on China cannot reasonably be described as a function of finding and conquering the new word. Firstly: the major conquest of the new world came through Spain, which had little to no involvement in the humiliation of the Middle Kingdom. Second, colonies in North America did not give the British gunboats capable of demolishing the Chinese fleets.
The reasonable conclusion is that the Enlightenment and the scientific advances eminating from that allowed the West to go from isolated, low population minor powers into worldwide empires.
That's basically every body apart from the west.
Education was a very elite thing in most societies, even in the west too. But some thing very strange happened around Gutenberg's times and west was able to take advantage of that unique situation.
For example, there is no parallel of Renaissance or Industrial revolution in any non-western country. China comes close, but even then, not exactly.
Not every big country in the world (I'm not talking specifically about your examples) has society that's sufficiently developed and sophisticated to pull off a modern XXI-century information age economy. In other words, it's not obvious that all the laggers will eventually (say within the next 50-100 years) catch up.
What's different, though, is that China is now looking outward. In the past, China was mostly concerned with itself, it has now learned that it can't afford to ignore the rest of the world.
There was opportunity to learn this lesson before. Why is it different now?
China sent off Admiral Zheng He to discover the world before Columbus. He sailed off with a huge armada of ships (as far as East Africa), reported back with some giraffes and such, and the emperor concluded that it wasn't worth it, and reverted to inward focus.
After the "century of humiliation" and being eclipsed by the west, the "lesson" is obvious now. That's different.
The mongol conquest of china?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_dynasty
> I think through history China always have been a superpower (with some short exceptions).
China has never been a superpower. They were always a regional power. There has only been 1 real superpower in human history ( the United States ). The next closest empires to the title of superpower are the mongols, british, soviets, etc, but they never dominated the globe the way the United States has. But as with everything, I guess it all depends on how you define the term.
Also, "china" as we know it today is a relatively recent phenomenon stemming from mongol china ( aka yuan dynasty ). Before then, it was series of dynasties constantly shifting borders. The borders that modern china ( and taiwan ) claim goes back to the yuan dynasty. Even the capital of china is beijing because the mongols made it the capital of china.