A note to Andy Revkin at Dot Earth at the New York Times re CHINA rises, the USA is nobody now

Andy, one more note. You keep framing the debate as if America has some role to play in all this, as if America is the center of the world. It is not. Read the recent oped titled [''China's success and Western woes''] by Orville Schell, the old China hand. China has already replaced America. America is nobody now. America no longer matters. Don't believe me? Wake up, all ye who dwell in the land of the USA, your days are more than numbered, they are already over:

Quote: When I began studying China at Harvard a half-century ago, China's
leaders trumpeted the superiority of their socialist command economy,
which controlled every aspect of life. Hostility between the US and
China prevented students like me from traveling there. But in 1975, there were no private cars,
shops, advertisements or property, I arrived in Beijing. 1975. Fast forward to 2009:

That trip set an indelible baseline against which I have since been
able to measure the changes in CHina since then and the decline of the USA

Quote 2: As the imbalance between China's increasingly dynamic, modern and
globalized economy and its opaque, single-party political rule
deepened, many Western specialists predicted the contradiction would
inevitably trip China up.

Instead, it was the US and the West that went into an economic tailspin.

QUOTE 3: Congress became paralyzed by partisan politics. Seemingly lacking a
central nervous system, it has become a dysfunctional creature with
little capacity to recognize any common national, much less
international, interest.

QUOTE 4: As governments across the West have become increasingly bogged down
trying to fix their economies, China has been formulating a series of
new, well-considered policies and forging ahead with bold
decision-making to tackle one daunting problem after another.

Triumphant after last year's Beijing Olympics, China has undertaken
the most impressive infrastructure program in history, implemented a
highly successful economic stimulus package and is now moving into the
forefront of green technology, renewable energy and energy efficiency
-- the activities out of which the new global economy is certain to
grow.

In short, China is humming with energy, money, plans, leadership and
progress, while the West seems paralyzed.


Quote 5: As I strolled through Tiananmen Square, the paradox that struck me was
that the very system of democratic capitalism that the West has so
ardently advocated seems to be failing us. At the same time, the kind
of authoritarianism and state-managed economics that we have impugned
seems to be serving China well.

It is intellectually and politically unsettling to realize that if the
West cannot quickly straighten out its systems of government, only
politically un-reformed states like China will be able to make the
decisions that a nation needs to survive in today's high-speed,
high-tech, increasingly globalized world.