An interesting point made on This Week on ABC. The idea that there will be a competition between "authoritative capitalism" as practiced in China vs. "democratic capitalism." The idea being that the Chinese, through their centralized government are more efficient than than the US with it's more antagonistic and therefore slower acting government. If we take out the discussion of "efficiency" and go back to their discussion of government power over the citizens, one must point out over the years that many so called "democratic capitalistic" countries like the US and England are moving towards more authoritarian practices. I'll give the example of the guy arrested for using twitter during the G20 protests. I'll even point out the G20 protests. You also have the police state school systems made under the guise of "zero tolerance" rules.
The so called Patriot Act which allows unprecedented spying on citizens. You have the gutting of FISA and by extension the 4th Amendment. What the Chinese authorities are betting on, is that if they can continue to provide economic and material opportunities to their citizens while taking advantage of a culture that defers to authority. So long as the US continues to have issues with it's economy, the Chinese will have a perfect example of how the US talks a lot of game but are undisciplined, which is a bad thing in that culture.
While Liz Cheney may want to believe in her pipe dream that somehow the US is all that more powerful than the chinese, I would remind her of the recent event where a US plane was "captured" by the Chinese, who kept the plane and returned the pilot. No one in authority in the US even THOUGHT about invading that country. There were no news conferences about "all options being on the table." No such nonsense as is regularly trotted out for weaker (and non-nuclear) Iran.
So before people over here get all beside themselves with US haughtiness just check the label on all those goods you purchase this holiday season, the manufacturing location of those auto parts in Pep-Boys and RS Strauss. And then think about how that 1.3 billion people, a middle class as large as the entire US population, will also be doing computing, medicine and everything else too.
(17 years of informed commentary)