From the Taipei Times, via Asia Media:
The hype about China’s future is unremitting. Indeed, there is a growing sense in some quarters that China is the future. There are two ways of highlighting this “fact.” One is to recount China’s rapid economic growth over the last two decades and to conclude that, with this kind of growth continuing over the next two decades, China would outrank the US as the world’s largest economy. The second way is to focus on the US’ perceived decline, with a resurgent China stepping into the resultant gap.
According to an Australian columnist who is given to hyping China’s rise, “We live in a world where the era of US pre-eminence as the only superpower is suddenly gone,” having lasted only 13 years from the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, to May 2, 2003, when US President George W. Bush hastily announced the completion of the mission in Iraq.
As of now, “Greater China [including Taiwan and Singapore — whether they like to be included as part of Greater China or not] now exerts the influence of a superpower through trade and commerce in a globalized economy where borders are not respected as much as money.”
