As a result of these things the Chinese language is an increasingly valuable skill throughout the continent. And you even see a variety of things like signs and other things that are also written in a local language, English, and Chinese as well.
It's extremely difficult to predict where China is headed, but in my opinion they are blazing their own trail in a way that, for now at least, seems to be working phenomenally well. And there's one critical nuance here. China has a population of 1.4 billion that is mostly united. If their economic growth and general influence continues along anything even vaguely resembling its current trajectory, they will be the most powerful and influential nation in the world in the very foreseeable future.
I agree China will become the world's largest economy in the near future, it remains to be seen if they will be able to escape the middle income trap. China demographically is getting older and is set for a decline in population. What happens if the population starts declining before achieving high-income status?
Japan proved that East Asian culture is perfectly capable of capturing the global imagination. But that didn't happen until the culture had decades to develop in a prosperous and free society.
I imagine that for the most part we'll just see a lot more of this. Throwing money at nations that have a hard time saying no, and simply trying to buy cultural influence. I don't imagine it will be a huge success.