I wouldn’t go so far as to say “China is the future”. I would go so far as to say China is going to be an increasingly larger part *of* the future, but there are ‘interesting’ places to be around the world right now where real growth is happening as well..it’s not unique to China 😀
I think that one of the biggest and most important factors here is infrastructure. Historically countries who built heavily into infrastructure grew rapidly and became real stable powers in their sphere of the world – and there’s no doubt China is investing in infrastructure at a cheetah pace (go to China Telecom, btw, see if their new 100mbit Fibre is available to your apartment 😀 600+/month tho). One of the BEST things I believe China has done is not taken part in any stupid wars: rather than nation build abroad, they’ve been nation building at home. As their clout and hubris grows to match their economy and social growth, this may change..hopefully not.
Africa has always intrigued me. I really think the biggest hold-up to East African growth is water and electricity. If technology fixes the electrical and clean water issues in the near future, they have some absolutely key factors to allow rapid foreign investment and hence growth, namely: political support (they’re dying for FDI and will pay companies in land and total tax breaks to get it) and a generally English (in some cases predominantly French or other european languages) speaking population, some locals I met involved in Tourism in Africa speak multiple european languages which is an enormous advantage for companies looking to expand into those places, oh..and, imo, a *really strong* work ethic and interest to get a good job. The real hold-up there is clean water and electricity, both of which I imagine will be solved with new technologies in the next couple years.
Unfortunately many probably wont be able to get a job there teaching English 😉