During the 1990s, even as globalization gained prestige, sometimes, as it might have seemed, from the reflected shine of the American economy, China was developing into a most curious economic phenomenon. Under Mao Zedong China was possibly the poorest country in the world. Now, it was becoming one of the largest economies in the world while still being 80% poor. This in part can be explained from the fact that while espousing capitalism in a gradual and uneven manner it was still politically under the astringent control of the Chinese communist party. This meant that the economic pace at which China moved was determined by political decisions. Yet for all that, China was shedding state control of the economy, which explains the astounding rates of economic growth. Even more awesome was the implication of the bigness of China.

If, with only a part of its population of over 1,200 million inhabitants engaged in economic modernization, China was becoming a world economic power, its potential was incalculable: every so many number of years, tens of millions of new consumers, and their respective suppliers, would be coming into the mainstream of world trade; and this could go on for half a century or more. The economic future of the world could very well be in China's hands. Unfortunately, because of its still archaic political organization, the Chinese colossus does not fully partake of the most prized values of Western Civilization. Its adherence to democracy is skin-deep. Its legal practices are at best dubious. In the interior, civil and commercial law are often subject to the vagaries of local political lordlings. The death penalty is applied summarily, with no appeal possible, and executed instantaneously. The only justification for these penal practices would have to be that all the executed were caught in fraganti, but considering that executions are in the thousands this seems improbable.

Despite the trampling of Western values in China, there was nothing that the rest of the world, and particularly the West, could do about it. In fact, at this stage in world history, the West, which was an increasingly obsolescent term, is becoming pertinent again, but not with the portentous cultural sense it had before. Yes, China was partially a product of the West, but China was definitely not of the West. China, like Japan in the 19th century, was assimilating Western economic modernism without giving an inch in the cultural domain. China is an Asian variant of Western Civilization with the economic and military clout to do things its own way. China would probably have achieved such a status under any set of international historical circumstances, but the fact is that it is doing it at a time when Western Civilization is less politically cohesive than it has been since before World War II.