In Confucian (East Asian) cultures, the concept of humility and humbleness is very important. Not to mention the word "superpower" has extremely negative connotations from the Cold War, where we were enemies with the two superpowers (USA and USSR) and engaged them in direct warfare multiple times (Korean War, Sino-Soviet Split, etc.)
But I don't know, it seems that in Indian society, people are favored if they boast more. Like President Kalam's famous proclamation about India being a superpower in 2012, and Manmohan Singh saying that Mumbai will surpass Shanghai in 2005. These two Indian politicians are HIGHLY intelligent individuals, not egotistic, very humble... yet they still say these things, and are lauded for it. I don't think they believe it themselves, but they know it's what the Indian people want to hear.
Chinese people don't want to hear those things, in fact the "big international news" that China became the number 1 economy in the world by GDP PPP never made a single headline in Chinese media, in fact it was completely avoided. China's National Bureau of Statistics in fact denounced the usage of PPP in calculating GDP, and it is never used in any official data, we only use nominal GDP.
The Diplomat - China doesn't want to be number one
By
Shannon Tiezzi
May 08, 2014
Last week, international media had a field day over the news that, based on a new World Bank report,
China’s economy will be the world’s largest in terms of purchasing parity power (PPP) by the end of 2014. Yet China itself did not embrace the news. The World Bank noted in its report that China’s National Bureau of Statistics had refuted the methodology used and refused to endorse the report. In addition, China’s state-owned media were largely silent about the data and its implications.
Now, a
report from Financial Times suggests China’s unease goes much deeper. FT, citing people who worked on the World Bank report, says that China actively tried to convince them not to use the data. “China wanted to throw this out,” a source told FT. “They begged and threatened for a whole year … China hates it.”