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This article is pure bunk. The Heritage Foundation is a propaganda organization founded by a Pittsburgh billionare for the sole purpose of increasing the wealth going to the rich. I would not believe a word of what they say.

Mankinds success is based on the cooperation, not competition between people. They have to trust and value each other. This is the source of human wealth, there is no other. China has shown the capacity to exploit people, not get cooperation. It will fail as many other third world countries where greed, not cooperation, is king. It is greed that keeps the poor countries poor.

The model of cooperation are the European countries, where the govenments purpose is to make sure the everyone gets a fair shake. In Europe everyone has medical insurance, retirement benefits, and reasonably fair wages.

The conservatives have placed us on a path that will lead us to a two class country with everything owned by a very few and every body e...(Read more of this comment)lse poor, like the south American countries (except Brazil). In these countries free enterprise as led to the rich accumulating all the wealth and the poor nothing.

Europe will be the dominate economy of the world. They have acheived a level of fairness unmatched here in the US. Corporations in Euirope have the board of directors elected by the employies. Here the Unions are being wrecked. Here the roads are paid for out of the employees taxes, in Europe the gasoline tax pays for the roads which makes everyone pay for them. Here 60% of corporations pay no tax at all yet get full use of the roads. Europeans have 6 weeks vacation, and on it goes.

If China could dominate the world economy it would already be doing so. It will never because greed exceeds fainess. The people that create the wealth and not the people that receive the wealth.(Show less of this comment)

singlemalt's commentary has a certain ... um ... well ... um Single Malt quality about it!

Well said, Sir.

Hear! Hear! :.

Surely the author of this article can't be deluding himself that a militarily and economically powerful fascist regime can be a good thing for the U.S., or the West in general? First of all, China is not communist. Not any longer. In spite of supposedly smaller government than the U.S., which is the basis of this foolish author's 'thesis', (and I use that term loosely) all real industry is still underwritten and commanded by China's military leaders, working behind the scenes, not the politicos. The military profits from industrial expansion, and uses that economic leverage to consolidate its own power. Economic power means further entrenchment of the existing system. How? Very simple. As long as Chinese citizens have increasing access to shiny consumer goods and affordable food, the real power in China knows that calls for political reform will be pretty much non-existent. One only has to look at the reaction of the Chinese public to Western efforts to promote human rights. There is a...(Read more of this comment)n almost rabid rejection, by the very public that would benefit, to Western efforts at promoting basic human rights and the rule of law.

Furthermore, the Western media, especially financial reporting, are very good at deluding themselves and us into thinking they have access to real facts and figures. Dangerously naive. Lack of transparency extends to every facet of government, including statistical reporting by the bureaucracy. China's bureaucrats had plenty of practice fudging numbers long before pundits from the Wall Street Journal, SmartMoney, and The Economist came along. Their own population has been hoodwinked by the government for generations, yet the Western media and financial commentators would like us to believe that the Chinese government provides them with reasonably accurate financial figures? Come on, grow up.

None of this bodes well for the U.S. or any other Western industrialized country. The scent of money is a powerful aphrodisiac, and that's at the root of glowing reports such as 'China's Gold-Medal Growth Holds More Promise than Threat.'

The one saving grace (but which will cause shock-waves worldwide) is what sm815 pointed out: that China will have a huge recession or depression at some time in the near future. The magazine pundits like to pretend that rising economie are immune to economic law. There is little or no difference between the reporting on China now and the reporting on Japan a generation ago. It is only different in degree. Every over-heated economy tanks. Japan did, and China won't be an exception.(Show less of this comment)

sm815 is spot on.

First of all there is no more escaping that around a billion of those poor serfs the Peking predators like you to call 'Chinese' are living in the kind of grinding poverty that 95-odd percent of Americans cannot even begin to imagine. And then there's that 40% of the much-vaunted 'Chinese economy' is based in intellectual theft, in fraud and in counterfeiting.

Then there is the self-appointed and self-perpetuating Peking gang's corrupt overstatement of 'growth,' which, when coupled with that gruesome gang's own and with every other Chinese opportunist's systemic looting of 'china's' banks (more than 50% of whose loans are 'non-performing' -- and of its every other institution -- it is a foregone conclusion that we shall soon see the whole house of cards come tumbling down.

And even if 'china's' coming crash was not the lay-down-misère certainty that, as sm815 has stated, it is, the world's economy is not a zero-sum game.

Every e...(Read more of this comment)conomy on Earth might very well grow at the same time and at the same rate as, say, that of the United states of America. Which in just the past several years has EXPANDED by more the sum-total of the entire Chinese economy.

And, barring a mobbed-up Marxist murtadd Muslim Arab-African conning his way into our beloved fraternal republic's most hallowed house, it will continue to do for much way way way longer than any of us will live!

Brian Richard Allen
Los Angeles - California 90028(Show less of this comment)

Within 2, maybe 3 years, China will be in one of the biggest recessions, if not depressions, the world has ever seen. It's a house of cards. And economic pyramid scheme.

A great analysis though the pseudo-patriots will be greatly agitated. The sooner we accept reality as it is, the sooner we mitigate our looming challenges. China's ascendency is for real, and the world will be a better place with a billion of its people attaining more comfortable lives.

JH: Rambling, bumbling, nattering. Next time have a thesis, or at least make a point.

Jbaby, are you 13 years old or something?

There is more to the world than China and the USA. India, another great chinese rival is revving its Engine. Then there are the emerging powers of great human potential such as Vietnam, not to mention Mexico, Brazil. The world is changing for better or not ...we better get used to it.

We have 300 million, they're over a billion, and we think their economy will overtake ours in 27 years? Duh! I'd bet it will happen a lot faster than that, and I predict as their economy grows some of the heavy manufacturing capability will move out of the US with it. The growth thing doesn't surprise me - as their nutrition gets better it's only natural growth would catch up with the rest of the developed world (and who knows, maybe they're adding something to the food - it is a Communist country after all).

The world will be a better place with a represive, comunist regime accending to power?If you really think so, get your one way ticket out of my country now!!