What is your opinion on which other countries will be part of the next rat race to superpower status? As you already mentioned, China has a head start here especially with their manufacturing prowess and influence in Africa but as
@MarvinTheParanoidAndroid alluded to in his post, their position is precarious at best given that they are nowhere near as stable as the US was when it rose to power after WW2.
I don't particularly see India in a strong position in this race for a while ("superpower 2020" notwithstanding) because they do not have much external influence like China does with Africa. The country has too many internal problems it needs to deal with first and each state has its own language/culture that limits the type of unity that would allow for it to establish itself as a superpower. In addition, while the manufacturing/innovation prowess is increasing it still depends on external investments. Their most valuable export is human labor (in the form of IT) and they only have the advantage here because English is taught as a primary language in all schools. And sure, we might see Indians at the head of major multinationals but that's not really serving to make their native country a superpower.
As for the EU bloc, it seems to me that they are betting on immigration to keep themselves afloat but the vast majority of the immigrants they're importing are leeches at best and destructive at worst. At least with the US, we are/were getting a significant number of immigrants who were net feeding into the tax system. I don't think the same can be said for EU countries. UK/France/Germany seem to be falling to similar issues as the US and the rest of the countries are more or less are dependent on these three to sustain themselves.
I'm not particularly familiar with Russia's economics or society to comment on whether they would re-establish themselves as the premier global force. They certainly exert their military influence in their surrounding countries but as far as economic and cultural influence, I'm not so sure.
Coming to South America, most countries with the exception of Brazil seem to be on the verge of collapse every few years. I'm not familiar with the internal politics of Brazil but I suspect the country is more culturally homogenous than India purely because they have one unifying language. That should give them some advantage in establishing themselves but they shoot themselves in the foot with their internal corruption.
Not sure what country can come out of Africa. Most of the well-to-do countries on that continent are supported in some fashion by either western or chinese investments. What happens to Africa when western countries or China need to withdraw because their own countries are in turmoil.
Given the shitshow Australia is going through, I don't expect much from there.
Ultimately, to me it seems like it's all heading in a direction where the new "superpower" will ultimately be less of a superpower than the US was in the 20th century. I think it's still understated how much influence the US had culturally/economically/militarily all over the world and I'm not sure we'll see another country with the same type of influence in our lifetimes. "America" still means something to a lot of people (smug euros excluded) even with all of the horseshit that goes on here. It will certainly be interesting to see what the new global economic/cultural hegemony will be. Perhaps it'll be a nation that doesn't exist yet.