Perhaps I’m the only one who feels this way based on the number of pro-China posts, but a Chinese hegemony would likely be a world of censorship and social credit. Compared to a flawed US democracy I’ll take the US democracy every time.
And as you say, it's good to be at the top.
It would be irrational of China's leadership to seek anything else.
To be the hegemon, you need to have a clear advantage over everyone else. China will never have that over the US+Europe. And by the time the US and Europe seriously decline, China will start declining too.
China's leadership would be foolish to seek hegemony. It's just not feasible short of the US going into a civil war, and if you come at the king, you best not miss. Becoming a second king yourself instead of trying to take his place is much less risky and has most of the same rewards.
Another way to look at it is that China will never have the same advantage over the US as the US gained over the UK before taking the lead. The US passed the British in economy and population much before it became the hegemon. You need more than an advantage in prosperity.
You're also missing the long game of China. Probably on our lifetimes the economic focus of the world is going to move to Asia and Africa based on opportunity of growth and demographics, looking from this perspective why would they care about conquering the west when they can just position themselves very well for the long term and have a nice view watching the decline of the west society?
The economic focus in the world moved to the US for about 70 years before the US gained hegemony.
You can be number one without being the hegemon.
"never" is a strong word here.
Tech and military wise they're catching up really fast. They have a much fitter and controlled population. Their economy is doing real good, they're spreading their influence over Africa, &c.
The US is crumbling on virtually every aspect, Europe isn't doing much better, if China and the US stays on their respective courses your "never" will be more like "in 50-100 years".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
> China is not interested in controlling or imposing beliefs
China is extremely interested in controlling and imposing the beliefs that the CCP is the best and should never be opposed and never makes mistakes, and demonstrates this daily within the great firewall and through threat of sanction against international media companies, nevermind the regular disappearance of high-profile individuals that cause "problems"...you know, to have a nice months-long chat with them that isn't about controlling or imposing beliefs.
> China has not had the imperial history
There are a number of formerly, currently, and soon-to-be-no-longer sovereign countries that don't want to be part of China, but China pretends they're not occupying/colonizing them by insisting they have always been part of China.
maybe you're right, depending on how you define citizens - though taking a page from the British empire, maybe everyone's a citizen!
>China is culturally an ancient agrarian society focused more on defending farmland
is nonsense just like all the Chinese netizens who keep saying that "We Descendants of Yanhuang have 5000 years of history". Non-sense, PRC happened in 1949, and before that, it's a History of ethnicities from all over the land Conquer, Massacre, Annex and Integrate each other.
EDIT:
> China is not interested in controlling or imposing beliefs
There are 56 ethnic groups in China, they may have different culture even religion, what do you think how China managed to make sure all 55 other then Han stay under control?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese
Is that incorrect?
And this is off-topic. The idea is simple: "China is culturally an ancient agrarian society focused more on defending farmland than conquering nation" does not stand. Conquering happens a lot on that land way before PRC is a thing.
It reminds me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nxqDHHORqg LOL