The paper is dedicated to assessing the prospects of China in the struggle for the place of the new hegemon of the capitalist world-system against the background of the crisis in the American systemic cycle of capital accumulation. The authors consider the strengths and weaknesses of the PRC economy, the current form of which was acquired through its industrial development as a part of the (semi) periphery of world capitalism. It is noted that China has made significant progress in the development of the manufacturing industry. On the example of ferrous metallurgy, it is shown how the PRC carries out world expansion, successfully entering into confrontation with the countries of the core of world capitalism. China is trying to form an infrastructure of control over the European, Latin American and African regions. At the same time, the model of China’s economic development, based on the exploitation of cheap labor, limits the country’s ability to introduce the sixth technological order, increase labor productivity and reduce dependence on foreign markets. The possibility of resolving such contradictions largely lies in the political plane and depends on the alignment of forces in the head of the Communist Party of China, which sets the vector of the country’s socio-economic development.