By EDWARD WONG MAY 31, 2015
BEIJING — A Chinese admiral said on Sunday that Beijing could set up an air defense zone above disputed areas of the South China Sea if it felt it was facing a large enough threat, according to Chinese news media.

The creation of an air defense zone would be viewed by the United States and Southeast Asian nations as a huge provocation.

... territorial disputes in the South China Sea, where China, Taiwan and Southeast Asian nations all have competing claims to waters, islands, reefs, shoals and sandbars. In recent weeks, the United States has criticized China for island-building and land reclamation efforts on disputed reefs and atolls that were uninhabited until recently.

... China is building much faster than any other nation and has completed 2,000 acres of land reclamation in the last 18 months. Vietnam and the Philippines have built structures on some land formations, but much of that construction took place before 2002, when China and rival claimants to territory signed a nonbinding agreement to cease any provocative activity in the region.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/world/asia/china-says-it-could-set-up-air-defense-zone-in-south-china-sea.html?_r=0

"The days of a single nation being 'the' superpower economically and militarily are over.

China has so many fundamental institutional problems that they will never be able to achieve much more than they are now." IV

"Communism does not work when it attempts to compete with the rest of the world without using:

theft of intellectual property
currency manipulation
humanitarian and environmental disregard"

"On a level playing field they collapse just as the soviet union did."

a) Mao is dead. It's a new millennium.

b) It was never a question of whether China could. China ALREADY HAS!

And then, feeling exploited for its openness resulting in outsiders getting secrets like gun-powder and silk, China turned insular, resulting in progressive decline.
Counter-intuitive though it may be, China thrives when it's open, when it's engaged in the world; and China's politburo is painfully aware of this.

Hong Kong absolutely CLOBBERED the Chinese mainland. In less than a century, Western ways brought great prosperity to Hong Kong, leaving the rest of China a subsistence farm.

It sure didn't for the Soviets.
Neither does North Korean totalitarianism.

But China is quite a different story.

Whatever.
The "playing field" may NEVER be level.

Predicting China's collapse here is laughable. The trend is clearly going in the other direction.

Fragmentary news reports indicate China has begun implementing a 100 year plan, to gain global dominance.

Extending & solidifying its territorial claims is but a fragment of that.
China seems in the midst of a blue water navy buildup.
And the Chinese have bought up mining contracts all around the globe, presenting at least the risk of corning the market, particularly on strategic metals and minerals, needed by the U.S. for military jet engines, among many other things.