Comment Re:So it begins (Score 2) 418
No, USA is not where it is simply because it is American.
The Western culture, as derived from Europe, is not The Universal culture, a precondition to civilization. At a glance you might think it is, as it has been the dominant culture for the past two hundred years or so, but this has more to do with luck and coincidence than with the values of ancient greece. Indeed, until the 18th century China was the GDP leader, by far, and even it's GDP per capita in the major cities surpassed that of any European city.
China has the longest-running statecraft in history. I don't expect this to be replaced by any other system anytime soon. Take Japan, which you might think is a Western country, but had you lived there, you'd quickly realize it's not. In Japan, from where I'm currently writing this comment from, the important values are not those of democracy and justice, but that of harmony. This manifests in a multitude of forms, some difficult or long to explain, but if you look at numbers, most court cases are settled out of the court, to keep harmony, to avoid conflict. See the voter turnouts, and you'll see Japan is not really a properly functioning democracy, although on paper it is. The government is seen in a completely different light. This all is even more true in China, which has had less Western influence on it than Japan.
Economic growth, modernization is not synonymous to Westernization. You are wrong to expect China to change to more Western values as it modernizes. In fact, quite the opposite might take place: The big global co-operation organizations, such as the IMF, were all spawned by the economic leaders, namely the West, at the time; pushing Western culture, brainwashing people to think that to have all the modern marvels, also the culture should change to resemble that of the West. Now when China is going to be No. 1, don't you think the opposite is going to happen, G7 has already largely been replaced by G20...