Potential, yes. China is rich, it holds around a coupld of trillion dollars of debt, mostly owed by the USA, but that is not really the point. The point is what do you do with all that money. What China is doing with that money is buying things, buying companies, buying resources, buying land. I guess its better than putting it in the bank! The West, USA, Europe etc., we are all living off debt, and there is little liklihood that we will suddenly become debt adverse. So for the time being China is just amassing massive currency reserves, and they are using them to buy buy buy! They are already buying large chunks of the world and the more they buy the more they will control. They are managing their population by spreading their population. Some 750,000 have moved to Africa in the last 10 years or so, thats a lot. The liklihood is that these new African/Chinese will become rich and influential. They are already so in numerous African countries, they will control large swaithes of Africa and plunder its resources.

The west needs to develop alternatives to oil, as China is oil hungry and securing large proportions of the World's oil reserves.

It appears clear that China, and indeed Asia as a whole will become more and more important and the focus of the world's economics will be to the east and not the west. As we chase scarce resources China will by reason of its massive financial clout control much of them and whereas that may not be a take over it will certainly mean that it will become the dominant force in economics and in a way they will control the World.

Bravo