China: An emerging super power?

I keep hearing that China is going to become so very powerful and soon.

I honestly don't think China will be a super power soon, they have too many internal problems (rift between rich and poor, corruption, enviornment, various social issues, etc...)

Is it just people talking about things they don't really know anything about or is there some truth to this?  Thoughts?

Cohesion of a society has nothing to do with how indvidualistic it is. As far as I am aware its more to do with the common bonds of a society. America is a free country and there are no movements even approcing mainstream that call for parts of it to break away. 
China obviously enforces its cohesion from the barrel of a gun and for the past 20 years though getting a chunk of the population much richer. Now no one knows for sure what would happen if all the people in China were given a choice to stick with it or not it seems quite likely you are likely to see somthing like post Russian empire in the 90's. At least more likely than the US.