China actually IS moving away from the plastic trinket/3rd world sweatshop industry, although slowly. They have begun buying western brands and have demonstrated that they can provide the same quality product on just as large a scale, if not on an even larger one.
For example, Chinese are very proud of Lenovo, who acquired the thinkpad line as well as all of IBM's other PC lines a few years ago, and who have been able to keep up its massive popularity even in the US.
Now, with the economic downturn in the US, they are buying even more brands, such as Hummer (and possible more GM brands too). 15 years ago, there was no such thing as a Chinese Car or a Chinese computer in the US, but both of those things are changing now, and fast. They could probably move into any industry they wanted with the same success, and our present economic status in the US is only making it easier.
The economies of China and the west are still to interdependent for even a shift in the top dog position to really effect the status quo (if china's economy became larger than the US, the world wouldn't necessarily end right there), so something else is going to have to change before anything really interesting happens.