To observe a society in a snapshot of time can create a false impression. Erasing the past is nothing new to China. The Communist Revolution and the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution are two recent examples of such iconoclastic behavior. What is different now is the scale and concentration of the effort. It is distilled in its purity and awe-inspiring for its totality. China surpassed Japan in 2004 to become the second-largest consumer of petroleum, after the United States, on the planet. Its economy and social stability, not to mention its might, will profoundly affect the prospects for world peace in the years ahead.
Despite such sparkling growth statistics, China's per capita GDP is only around US$1,000 a year and, despite a government described of as communist, one of the world's greatest chasms exists between rich and poor.
No great wave of immigration, as seen 80-100 years ago in America, is necessary to meet a demand for cheap labor, as China's depressed, agrarian interior possesses millions of landless peasants eager to illegally migrate to cities to earn higher wages for unskilled labor. These peasants are the fodder for urban factories which fuel China's phenomenal economic growth.
