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Probably depends on what you mean by catch up. China's economy is already more than 20% larger than the U.S. using Purchasing Power Parity. If we look at industrial production and exports, then of course China dwarfs the U.S.
China will probably not reach U.S. levels of per-capita GDP anytime soon. But they still have a clear path to a much larger GDP just by integrating rural peasants into the larger economy.
The rural population is aging faster than the urban population, is dramatically less well educated, and wages in urban China are rising too quickly to try a repeat of the world's cheapest workshop plan that worked in the 1990s.
There is still some steam left in that boiler, but not incredibly much and, once it's gone, it's gone.
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PPP is a bad indicator when you’re talking about strategic power, and it’s not even a particularly good way to compare relative economic power.
As far as integrating rural residents into the economy: they have. There are more Han twice as many urban as there are rural Chinese these days, and there’s a point where you hit diminishing returns on taking rural peasants and turning them into factory workers. At the moment China has a significant unemployment problem, and already “integrated” workers are having trouble finding jobs as it is.
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