Actually, China being an economic powerhouse is relatively new. Sure there was previously a lot of trade, but prior to WWII it was pretty much the West who's economies profitted the most from trade with China. Britain's East India Company made an art out of exploiting Eastern countries. Hell, they even got England to fight a war with China for the right to get the Chinese addicted to opium.

Once the communists took over in 1949 the disasterous effects of Mao and his Great Leap Forward, and later the Cultural Revolution, just took their economy backwards. It wasn't until the reforms of the early '80's that China's economy started to grow and then in the 90's it just took off at an staggering rate. To give some perspective on how fast it has grown, China's current GDP is about 200 times greater than it was in 1980. Compare that to the U.S., where our current GDP is only about 4.5 times greater than it was in 1980.

Despite the rapid growth of China's economy, I agree that we shouldn't be threatened by it. They are a massive country with a huge population. Whay shouldn't we expect they have a huge economy to go with it. Why is this seen as a threat and not common sense? Do we have any right to demand they don't strive to increase their standard of living? We're all for digging wells and sending grain to starving kids in third world countries, but fuck them if they want a couple of tv's and two cars in the garage. Why? And what do we expect they are going to do that is so threatening?

China does have a huge, and growing, military but so do we. Why is it that when we build the most massive, high tech, military in the world it's called "defense" but when China build it's military it's called "intentions of world domination"? In any case, thier military doesn't pose much threat to us here in the U.S.. Sure, they'd probably kick our ass if we tried to invade, but they have no way of projecting their military might beyond their borders. Except for nukes but seriously, unless the shit really hits the fan, and probably even if it does, this isn't going to happen. They know if they did they'd be wiped out. It's the old M.A.D. standbye that has kept itchy trigger fingers off the button for a long, long time.