I’m not saying I disagree with the conclusion of this article, but I am saying that just because in a nation as large as China there is poverty, even lots of it, doesn’t mean that China can’t kick our butts economically. Vast, economically powerful empires have been built on slave labor. Just not in the last 100 years (well, USSR did okay for a short while…), so for some reason maybe they don’t count.
In that big a country there’s lots of room for economic disparity, especially with their communism and all. Will that disparity decrease as China grows economically? My capitalistic heart likes to think so, but to the degree that it has in the US and Europe? Not without a democratic revolution of some sort. Can China contain the explosion into some sort of democracy in a relatively non-violent revolution? I hope so.
His Nobel prize argument is different. Does a large economy necessitate Nobel science prize winners? That’s a very modern (in the not postmodern sense), Western way of thinking. I like it because I agree with it, but I’m not used to seeing that in the media.
Not So Fast 