China’s economic ascent – the most sweeping and rapid march to industrialization in world history – has much of the rest of the globe and particularly Americans reeling backwards in, shall we say, shock and awe. Even many who long have believed that the 21st Century could be China’s suddenly find themselves overwhelmed by the current pace of the transfer of economic and political power from West to East. This shift may continue for years or decades. This dragon is largely real, as are its challenges to the developed world and, again, particularly to America.
But China is a rising world power with a vast vulnerability: its underbelly of 800 million increasingly restive peasants in its often chaotic countryside.