The Age of China?

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An interesting, if not provocative, read from Foreign Policy in Focus, WorldBeat, Vol. 6, No. 19:

[P]erhaps the only country in the world that has benefited from the last decade of war against al-Qaeda is China, and it has benefitted big time. Beijing has watched the United States spend more than $3 trillion on the war on terrorism, devote its military resources to the Middle East, and neglect pretty much every other part of the globe (except where al-Qaeda and its friends hang out). The United States is now mired in debt, stuck in a recession, and paralyzed by partisan politics.

[…]

[T]he International Monetary Fund looked again into the crystal ball and announced that the Chinese economy would become the world’s largest in 2016.

[…]

The Osama bin Laden Era is over, and with it will end the Age of America. Here’s one sign of the transformation: a child in Shanghai, writes Nicholas Kristof in a sobering op-ed, will now statistically outlive a child in the United States. China remains corrupt, intermittently oppressive, and subject to the same economic disparities and financial bubbles as the United States. But while we were fighting the chimera of a caliphate, China was going about its business and eating our lunch.


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