AHC: People's Republic of China a superpower by the 21st century

With a POD of no earlier than Oct 1, 1949, make the PRC a superpower alongside the US by the year 2000. Could this be done if Mao was killed off early on and someone like Deng Xiaoping implemented reforms 20 years ahead of OTL?
 
Mao dies of a heart attack during the Korea War and has no opportunity to start the disasters of the Great Leap Forward and the cultural revolution.
 
Here are a few suggestions:

Preventing the Great Leap Forward/having a saner alternative would go some way to bulking up the PRC (an extra decade of steady, if heavy-handed, industrialisation would be infinitely better than what happened IOTL).

Still have the Sino-Soviet split happen, with China expanding their influence globally by playing the US and USSR against each other.

In terms of international allies and influence, have the pro-China faction of the North/United Communist Korean politburo win out, have a less Sinophobic leader of the Vietnamese Communists which leads to Indo-China falling under the Chinese sphere of influence (and hopefully butterflies away the worst excesses of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia). Have Indonesia go Communist/build very close ties with China in the name of anti-Imperialism. In Africa China is able to act as a patron for states weary of Soviet and American influence.

As the Soviet Union declines, what remains of it and the wider Soviet bloc falls under the influence of China.
 
Do they have to be a true equal to the US?

If China just from 2009 to the present increased their military budget to 6% of their GDP (around what America spends counting the National Guard and VA) they would have a military budget of ~650 billion nominally and over a trillion PPP. The gap between China and the third biggest economy is already gigantic (11 vs 4.5 billion nominally) and when taking price differences into account they have the biggest overall GDP now.

They still would lack the technology, power projection, alliances, finance, and cultural influence America does, but so did the Soviet Union.
 
Do they have to be a true equal to the US?

If China just from 2009 to the present increased their military budget to 6% of their GDP (around what America spends counting the National Guard and VA) they would have a military budget of ~650 billion nominally and over a trillion PPP. The gap between China and the third biggest economy is already gigantic (11 vs 4.5 billion nominally) and when taking price differences into account they have the biggest overall GDP now.

They still would lack the technology, power projection, alliances, finance, and cultural influence America does, but so did the Soviet Union.

Well yeah, something along the lines of the Soviet Union, so not a true equal I guess.
 
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