jpa--By Westernization I mean the materialist, capitalism model of consumption. For those who are paying attention (obviously not alter dusty), they would know that the Chinese workers are increasingly protesting for better pay and conditions and the rich-poor gap widens in China. The aging Chinese population will place additional strains on the welfare state.

The model is very simple. Look at manufacturing in almost any Western country: workers develop greater aspirations, work harder and more women start working, birth rate declines, places higher demands and stress on the next generation which demands more pay to support aging population. That's why the West lost its manufacturing base in the last century, and the only Western nations with growing populations are growing due to immigration.

Flor--It won't happen in India for the foreseeable future because India's population is substantially younger than China's.

Britexpat--Your thinking like a mercantilist, rather than a global free market capitalist. A destabilized China would be ruinous for the US. The idea that the two are in some sort of economic competition for limited resources is exactly the sort of crap joke Alter Dusty is talking about. No real economist has thought in those terms for almost two centuries.