China had been the world's richest and most powerful country for most of the past four thousand years, a record no country could claim and would take a few more thousand years to break. The trouble with China occasionally stumbling was ironically because the of military system. All the way from Xia to Qing dynasties to KMT and CCP, regional warlords, factional warlords commanded their own armies. KMT and CCP were technically political parties. But what did they do? They fought with their own armies, not with people's ballots. Qin Shihuang was the first to abolish this by ending the warring states, but it lasted only a couple of decades.
From Han Dynasty onwards, the autonomous regional command of armies resumed again, though it was maintained that statehoods were abolished as it was under Qin. The only difference being warlords couldn't call their terrorities states, but just provinces, couldn't call themselves kings, but just lord-governors. But in practice, they still controlled and commanded the territory and army. The Emperor had to rely on their loyalty. That was in ancient and medieval era when centralized command and communication over huge tracts of territories and troops were difficult to be controlled from a single capital or throne.
That was all the way until PRC with PLA totally eradicted that system or culture. But with modern military command and communication systems, as demonstrated by USA so effectively and impressively, it's highly unlikely that PRC would lose control and China breaks up into warring states among warlords again.
