Another in the series of Friedman articles on China

[semerkhet]

I've pasted the article behind the cut. Most jarring and to the point is the last line of the article, "We deserve to lose. We are clutching our past with these tremulous hands, and everyone else is vigorously grasping the future."

Comments

[michael_va]

On the scale of historic time, all nations, empires and religions rise, have their era of dominance and decline. The factors that cause these cycles are many and diverse. There is a Roman aphorism that was part of a collection referred to as Lex Natura: "Grow or die!" Social change that effectively responds to a crisis or a new set of circumstances is cultural growth, similar to the tissue growth that occurs in the bodies of plants and animals in response to physical challenges.

I didn't indend to wax prosaic, oh well!