Watching China in this animation is quite interesting. It bobs in and out for a while but, once it catches hold, it's off to the races.

There is a tendency to think entrepreneurialism and capitalism as having been invented here. But that if you look at history, as with so many things, the Chinese were there a millennium or so before it was envisioned in the west. Even under very repressive communist regimes there it has been bubbling at a low level and staying below the government's social radar. Recent changes in Chinese government policies that have permitted companies to operate as capitalistic ventures merely let the genie out of the bottle. With their population and determination the only surprising thing to me is that it took this long for them to become the number two economy in the world.

When I taught at a University where we had a student exchange program with Beijing University. I frequently found U.S. students unwilling to take classes if there were too many Chinese in a class. My response was, "If you won't compete with the Chinese here, you better learn their language because you will need it when you are working for them in the future." On the flip side I had to teach the Chinese students how to be students in this country and unafraid to question me when I was unclear or wrong and I was not insulted or did not lose face when we engaged in honest discussion.

[I know that at least two of my former students were in Tiananmen Square when the tanks rolled in. I hope they survived, if they did I know they are doing well. They were scary smart!]

Taking a simple-minded look at the rate of growth in the animation, one wonders if they are headed for Number One. In the time-frame used, the American GDP grows by roughly 35 times while the Chinese is about 244 times larger than it began.