<p>To be honest when I said dwindling I wasn't talking about their economy (which isn't growing as quickly as China's), I meant territory. Anyway, I agree with you completely that China's growth is overrated by both ignorant people and the sensational media. There seems to be a 'Chinaphobia' phenomenon that people have long been developing since it first became Communist and the economy started growing, here in the US. </p>
<p>Basicly the main argument agains the " Dragon Ascending " is that the growth is temporary and not sustainable at it's current levels.</p>
<p>Heres from a previous post I made on China to support us...</p>
<p>1) Yes if you go back to the 60's you'll remember the red scare and all the irrational invalid fears of China's population. They ended up stagnating for 20 years during the cultural revolution and communism. Boy those westerners were fools then.</p>
<p>2) As for your 'many generations,' in 45 years you can have at least two generations. I also was hinting that even earlier Westerners some respect for China's history.</p>
<p>3) (Removed and N/A statement in the context of this discussion)</p>
<p>4) The reason people are often'naive' is because a few centuries ago China was not one of the world's largest economies. The Tang dynasty ( 唐朝 Tang2 Chao2) was the peak of China's history, and that was numerous centuries ago-cut short by the mongols and suceeded by the Qing which was weak and crumbled easilly to Western powers. Note that the Qing dynasty (清朝 or Qing1 Chao2) was never anything beyond a gradually weakening regional power and incomparable with the west in terms in technology, infrastructure, and influence. The only time that China ever had the potential to rule the world was millenium ago, well before the Renaisance (see Tang: AD 618 to 907.) After the Mongols, China fell hopelessly behind the West until the Opium wars forced China to catch up with the west a hundred-some years ago.</p>
<p>5) Someone said, "Nor did I know that centuries ago, before the start of imperialism, China needed to "rise" at all considering, as best as I can remember, it was viewed as one of world's largest economies."</p>
<p>Well, as I've said before imperalism China was controlled by the Mongols-during this time China's inventions counted for nothing compared with the advances in Gunpowder, etc in Europe. Afterwards China's technological growth slowed even more, and the simple fact of the matter is that relative to Europe China had fallen behind and was 'NOT one of the world's largest economies.' (Discount population here and look at GDP or per worker productivity, since China has always had a massive population that tends to distort statistics on the country's actual efficeny.)</p>