The People’s Republic of China is growing increasingly powerful on the world stage. From the Indo-Pacific region to Africa, the authoritarian communist juggernaut is asserting its will in new and bold ways both economically and militarily. Here are five reasons that China very well could become the next world superpower:

China is an economic powerhouse that exploits insanely cheap labor

China has legions of cheap workers and a massive underclass who work for pennies on the dollar building, slaving in factories and toiling in every job imaginable. These hardworking men and women crank out the cheap products Americans and Westerners buy everyday. When you add in China’s ability to order quotas on production in order to flood the world market with cheap raw materials like steel as well as the central government’s ability to manipulate currency to gain a trading advantage you have a serious situation. Right now particular focus is on China’s “Made in China 2025” initiative and the “One Belt, One Road” project – both aimed at making sure China stays on top and dominates the economies of the region.

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China is ruthless and doesn’t care at all about human rights

No more proof is needed than the fact that China currently has up to 1.5 million of its minority Uyghur citizens in concentration and “reeducation” camps where they are reportedly starved, beaten, tortured and psychologically humiliated until they bow down to communism, renounce their Muslim religion and pledge complete loyalty to Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his state. Even more disturbingly, China has been credibly accused of killing political prisoners to sell their organs on the world market. China is not a country that is concerned with how outsiders see its human rights record. This allows it to take unprecedented steps domestically to quell dissent and control citizens, something that modern, rights-based nations are more hesitant to do and would face much greater resistance if they tried to do.

China is rapidly building up its military and weapons technology

As the Department of Defense’s new China Military Power Report revealed last month, the Chinese nation is rapidly expanding its military power with the goal of becoming a leading world military by 2049. In particular, China is constructing its second aircraft carrier and developing its missile systems as well as advanced fifth-generations warplanes that officials believe may contain US technology stolen by Chinese spies. With its 500,000 reservists and 2.03 million active duty personnel, China’s People’s Liberation Army is far from a paper tiger. By steadily advancing its arsenal and upgrading its weapons, troops and military technology, China is revealing that its strategy for security going into the future includes the desire for dominance and potential use of military force abroad especially their desire to control the South China Sea and roll back the influence of US-allied Japan and South Korea.

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China has legions of dedicated spies in countries all over the world

Chinese spies have been particularly effective at cybertheft around the world, leveraging investment into foreign companies as ways to extract secrets from their technology work and using their edge on technology production to infiltrate sensitive networks. A DOD report noted that “In 2018, we saw specific efforts targeting such areas as aviation technologies and anti-submarine warfare technologies.”

China has a mandatory and strongly-enforced state ideology that unifies its people

As distasteful as it may be to many freedom-minded individuals and those who support human rights, China does have an effective enforcement ability of its state ideology and demands that all citizens follow it. They are also currently rolling out their massive and dystopian social credit score system, where citizens can face numerous consequences and obtain rewards for their behavior, political views, buying decisions and overall agreeableness to the central government. The system, which will be supported by hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras, affects everything from what loans you can get to where you can travel and what jobs you can find. With this level of control and its government of savvy social engineers, China has the all-important technological edge going forward, despite being dwarfed by US military and geopolitical power.