Just read a column about China , in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (found it through RealClearPolitics). I, also, see China as a potentially threatening future rival, but not to the extent that this guy does. For example:

Last month the city government of Beijing cancelled an order for software from the American firm Microsoft because the Chinese government assessed that Chinese customers were not buying enough Chinese-made software, thus discouraging Chinese production.

Two pieces of this action are scary for Americans. The first is that someone, somewhere in China is looking over the whole Chinese economy and making judgments like that, which are then translated into action.

I disagree that this is "scary" for Americans - in fact, I see it the opposite way: that's great news for our side.

For backup, I present the writings of F.A. Hayek:

Democratic assemblies cannot function as planning agencies. They cannot produce agreement on everything – the whole direction of the resources of the nation – for the number of possible courses of action will be legion. Even if a congress could, by proceeding step by step and compromising at each point, agree on some scheme, it would certainly in the end satisfy nobody.

To draw up an economic plan in this fashion is even less possible than, for instance, successfully to plan a military campaign by democratic procedure.

This is the great fallacy of central economic planning: it can't be done. A national economy is too vast, and too complex. Committees and individuals can't respond to the immense number of variables that exist.

Thus, if the author is correct, and "someone, somewhere in China is looking over the whole Chinese economy and making judgments like that," then the Chinese are at an automatic and, eventually, fatal disadvantage to the U.S.

At least, they are as long as we can keep the socialists in our own country at bay.