Re: NYTimes.com Article: Letter From Asia: China Is Romping With

        I just returned from a month in the Middle Kingdom (i.e., China),
reading the PRC's daily newspaper in English every day, and visiting ten
major cities.  In no time at all Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bremer, the
United States, Britain, and all the rest shrank to insignificance, the
mere bawlings of barbarians, while the Middle Kingdom went serenely
forward, cultivating close ties with its neighbors, building, growing,
firmly occupying the center of the globe as it has--yes, Gunder!--for most
of the last 2,000 years.  I cannot believe that its phenomenal progress
can be sustained, for ecological reasons, over 2,000 more years, but right
now its aspiration to world leadership is entirely credible, and I have to
wonder if it really matters a damn in the longer run what the United
States or the midget polities of Old or New Europe do or don't do.  Factor
in India and Indonesia and the rest of Asia as well, and it's Brobdingnag
versus Liliput.