Not at all, mate, you've got it exactly right. People who persist in thinking of China as this vast pool of willing sacrifices haven't any idea of what has happened since the days of Mao Zedung. Presently China is the third biggest consumer of luxury goods in the world. By 2015 it is tipped to be the first. Consumerism is what rules China right now. The average person has no political knowledge or idealism at all. Nationalism died around the time of the Cultural Revolution. It is the economic, not the military zone which rules these days.

"Sweat shop conditions" buy a life style far superior to that of the average working Joe in the Western world.

So Romany,you are trying to tell us that China has experienced a new cultural revolution since Tiernamin Square? A million people then was considered to be a small number to exterminate in the name of their totalitarian state.

China has the whiff of absolute power in it's nostrils,and they are just testing the water.The power of their population has the edge on nuclear weapons when the real war starts.The US is just realising this in Iraq.

That China holds such a large amount of US debt, it is unlikely that either side will provoke the other. However, despite China's rapid economic expansion, its thirst for 1st world lifestyle is posing a serious threat to the entire globe: in terms of food supply, increasing pollution and adverse climate change. These are issues that will make economics irrelevant. The recent destruction of a satellite may well be a proud moment of technological achievement for the Chinese, but it is something about which the entire world should be very angry. Having already polluted their own region, and increasingly the whole world, they are now expanding their irresponsible acts of pollution into space, as thousand of fragments of junk orbit the earth as a result of the satellite explosion. I will as far as possible boycott Chinese products.

For some years I have said that China will be a security risk which we are now witnessing as the Chinese government interferes with Pacific Island nations.

What with idiotic fools running western nations where we allow Asian nations to not only own what were our industries, we have handed over the control our debts as well.

When will fools wake up? They don't. What matters is if the those following fools wake up before it is too late.

No, Arjay, I'm not "trying to tell" you anything. I'm simply pointing out that to continue to think of China as the yellow peril who will invade ones shores with rifles at the ready is no longer necessary. As other posters point out, there are many other ways successfully to skin a cat.

Romany,consider this scenario.World temperatures continue to accelerate,and the rest of the world limits their buring of fossil fuels,however China continues polluting refusing to limit CO2 because they feel that they should have special dispensations being the world's manufacturer of consumerables.

Who is going to boycott their products when there are effectively no industries left in the West that makes consumerables?The cheap labour of China and India are very enticing,but it all comes at a cost.

China as the new world power will be totally rational and dispassionate.I think the US haters will yearn for the halcyon days of American imperialism.