China has a rapidly aging demographic due to their one child policy and preference for male leading to a skewed gender ratio. All of this compared to its neighbors, US & Europe which simply uses immigration, leaves China in an unrecoverable state. The leadership knows this and all they can do is kick the can down the road.

Unless they come up with robots or start opening up immigration (which will be a hard sell), you are going to have old single men competing for whatever economic avenues they can find. Single men living in dense urban zones in poverty is guarantee for unrest. ex) Syria

PRC is Qing Dynasty 2.0 and it will be divided up by foreign powers when its weak. Sort of like how NATO & EU prevents Russia from retaking its former satellites permanently and this is exactly why Putin is in Crimea, Georgia, and now Latvia (massive open terrain allows fast ground, air invasion of Moscow and this has always been the central core of Russia both past and the present security policy).

This time, it will not be allowed to unify. The West, China's neighbors who are after its loot, will simply allow all 55 minorities to declare independence, and massive civil war is a real possibility between competing regions.

If you understand China, they are forced to follow Beijing. People from South are more westernized and business minded. The southern coastal provinces are best poised for economic recovery and could be the favored state.

When the smoke clears, a unified Korea is in the best position to take over because of its soft power in the region.

Nobody forced people to become America, people put it on themselves to become American. This is the power of culture and China simply played its hands too early and were caught stealing chips. Figuratively and literally