John Derbyshire’s recent essay regarding the increasing influence and coming dominance of China’s commercial, technical, and cultural power includes this gem:
It helps that the ChiComs have avoided the major stupidities of American and European governments this past twenty years. They have not squandered trillions of dollars and thousands of lives on futile wars in places of no importance. They have not opened China’s borders to tens of millions of foreigners selected on no rational principle, swamping the nation’s ethnic core, generating resentment and rancor.