I will not time dissecting your essay but let's stick to wages. You seem to think Chinese workers are those exploited by sweatshops when you fail to realise many Chinese are not employed by such sweatshops. Many Chinese work for government owned enterprises, big local companies and multinationals, which on most part pay reasonable salary and benefits. A worker in the Yangtze river delta makes around 200 USD per month, not including subsidized housing etc. Professionals in Shanghai and Beijing now make anywhere from 1500 USD to 10K USD per month. A skilled programmer in Shanghai earns close to 1500 USD per month. So your repeating that Chinese workers make less than 100 USD per month is an assault on the relity in China. Like I said, China's clout comes from its sheer size, you can't deny that.The fact that China's minority urban class can create the world's second largest auto market in a few years (yes, Chinese do buy cars, not just refrigerators) shud tell you that clout. "The conumdrum was this, instability could choke off investment and stall a nation's growth, but instability seemed to increase with income as a nation developed until that magic $2000 per capita per annum was achieved.". This has to be a load of crap that has been debunked many times over. HKG, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea all passed the 2000 USD per capita threshold without instability creeping in and it wasn't till SK reached 10000 and Taiwan 15K did democracy kicked in. Singapore, at 27K, is still authoritarian. Then there is Malaysia, it has a GDP close to 10K and yet where is true multi-party democracy?? There is no reason to believe there will be instability if China reaches 2K in per capita. The fact is, Western Liberals seem to hang on to this fallacy, including yourself. China will finally put this absurdity to rest.
