It is a common misconception to think that capitalism requires democracy, or that democracy requires capitalism.

Democracy will inevitably emerge from a large middle class. It just happens. Concentrate the wealth in the upper class and you don't have a democracy. More money = more power to change your society.

Also, the idea that any civilization is more advanced than another is completely ethnocentristic. Ask an American, Brit, German, Russian, or French person who invented the computer for example. Basically, humans are smart and will figure out problems that affect their lives. Jared Diamond's books, I think, illustrate this point well. If you're going to compare war machines then you can see how civilizations exercise power over one another, but that doesn't make them great, it makes them scary. When the Germans showed off their "Triumph of the Will" movie/nonsense, the point was to scare the bejesus out of their neighbors with their organized manpower not to show how great they were. As we can easily see now looking back into that past, this German military power did not equal a great civilization, in fact it signaled the downfall of Europe's long tradition of great science/technology since the fascist state scared the bejesus out of most of their scientists/intellectuals in their country and around Europe. They came to the US and as a result, raised the American scientific community up from good to fantastic.

What is interesting is that the population of china BELIEVE that they should be number one (of some cultural/military/ecconomic/technological measure). Now that means a lot. Inspire people to the point that they think it's a given that their civilization will be great and I think it will.

Did you hear the part of the broadcast where the Mr. Gifford was visiting a church in China and the paster didn't show up? He said an 84 year old woman requested for him to do the sermon. That was pretty funny and nicely agrees with an egalitarian ideal common to socialism and supposedly Chritianity.

"Concentrate the wealth in the upper class and you don't have a democracy."

Is this the hidden agenda behing the recent tax breaks for rich a'la Bush? They
deliberately intend to destroy the middle-class in USA and thus be able to
govern in some non-democratic manner. right?

after all these years of listening to public radio, have you YET made a donation Chow, HAVE YOU???!!! www.wbur.org get to it!

Siobhan: Yes, I have.

Matti: Good point on democracy and captialism.

Analogworm: From this week's issue of the Economist: "China may not be another Evil Empire, but it is still a repressive one-party state: can it be changed, or must it merely be made room for? And will what China has termed its "peaceful rise" really be that, or could it become more confrontational?"

Cyber, yeah, I wonder about his a lot. My wife is a Chinese American so I'm particularly sensitive to typical whitebread Americans being afraid of China. On the other hand, my wife's family fought the communists in the 40's and 50's so I'm sensitive to that perspective as well. You know, though, I wonder if governmental structure doesn't matter as long as there is a distribution of power (which I relate to money). When the industrial revolution kicked in around the world, you had the conflict in power between the new industrialists upper class and the old money/royalty upper class. As wealth accumulated and information transfer improved, worker's rights started up and some wealth shifted towards the middle of the country. But, I think the manufacturing bosses of the late 1800's early 1900's had their own group of managers and those managers ended up forming the seed of a true middle class. I'm getting to my point. This country had/has some great ideals about individual freedoms, but I wonder if they really only materialize when the individual has enough power in comparison to the rest.
With the ideals of the communist party being that there should be some equality to all workers (I'm not ignorant to the fallacy of this, I'm just stating that they keep this in people's minds) more people with money and an upbringing in that rhetoric will most likely ... believe it and with their money... exercise that belief.
So will China be beligerant or peaceful? It Depends, I think. I have a feeling that with true diplomacy and some economic incentives/disincentives we can avoid conflict between the US & China or China & Europe (or Europe & the US for that matter). It might be a good idea though to park our destroyers around Taiwan from time to time as we have done. Truth is that war profits only the military-industrial complex. Electronics businesspeople will lose a huge amount of income to trade interruption and they will put pressure on the aging ruling elite in China to protect their money. Hardliners in all countries eventually die and new blood comes up again. The key, I hope, is befriending that new blood and pointing to the peaceful prosperity that happens without war. Economically, the economic system of the world... the total sum wealth of the world declines with conflict and improves with peaceful trade. When one satellite & internal guidance controlled cruise missle blows up, that's millions of dollars lost from the world (not just our country), but when a good bridge is built, that's a semi-permanent benefit to all.

Cheers!