[yafbum]

Japan and South Korea are allies of the US. They are also much too small in population and resources to reach a level of economic power that would allow them to do anything on their own.

The Chinese Communist party has the resources, people and determination to follow a different course. It might underperform relative to its size, and the one-child policy is going to cause a disastrous demographic situation, but even if you consider just coastal, urban China, that's getting pretty close to US in terms of people and economic power. The communist party is developing its military capabilities at a fast clip, and fusing its military and civilian economies to accelerate its technical development. Where almost every other government has been unable to wrestle control of Internet information, the Chinese Communist party has successfully turned its version of the Internet into an effective tool of govt propaganda and social control.

In other words, there are lots and lots of very concrete reasons to believe that the post-development trajectory of China can be very different from Japan's or South Korea's.