China’s Dramatic Rise, and What It Means

China’s economy is now the world’s second largest, and China is set to soon replace the US as the foremost economic and industrial nation. Over the past 30 years, real per capita income in China has grown by more than 1,300 percent. Over the last decade alone, China quadrupled its industrial output. It now produces more automobiles than the US and Japan combined. Each year many more people graduate with science and engineering degrees in China than in the USA. China — along with Hong Kong, Singapore, and, to a lesser extent, Taiwan and South Korea – has achieved dramatic economic growth with a social-political system that combines free enterprise and “state socialism.” What those countries have accomplished over the past half century proves that economic growth, technological progress and prosperity are possible without US-style democracy and capitalism. In the years ahead China will play an ever more important role in world affairs, and will increasingly challenge America’s “leadership” position.

Picture: Mark Weber at the Great Wall of China, Oct. 2009.