From the Editor's Desk

The Politics of Pessimism

It had been clear for years that China was rising and rising—building rail lines and airports and skyscrapers at a rate that put the United States to shame, purchasing the favor of poorer countries, filling the world with its wares—when, in April 2014, I happened upon a bit of news. CNBC, citing a "new study from the world's leading statistical agencies," reported that China's rapidly growing economy would rank first in the world, surpassing the United States', by as soon as the end of the year. Our century-plus reign as the world's wealthiest nation was over, or about to be. What a run we'd had!But the study, which used debatable methodology, turned out to be wrong. It interested me less than something else I learned when I began poking around the internet to put it in some sort of context. I discovered that most Americans thought that China already had become our economic superior. And they'd thought that—erroneously—for several years.


Continued here

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