LOL! Sadly, we've "PCd" to the point of fucking ourselves... and don't even realize it. Throughout history, the world knew who the Big Dog was... and gave it respect. Failure to do so brought consequences. America was once the Big Dog but not so much any more. Why? Because WE PISSED IT AWAY!!
What I observed as a rule in comparing U.S. and China is that what ever U.S. does China does it in 5-10 times in volume when it reaches equilibrium.
The deeper question is, "why or how could you piss it away?" It all lies in POWER and the handling thereof. An abuse of or misuse of this lofty, esoteric plateau sets in motion the downhill ride. Big dog is now Big Bully, no more compassion, benevolence, empathy, just BULLY and he's met his match, China.
Quote from risktaker: "These fools who write this shit are a bunch of monkeys. All they do is extrapolate past data into the future, nothing more." You called him a fool, are you a moron? The author is a Nobel Prize winner in Economics. Do you really understand what a Nobel Prize winner means? Do you understand why Harvard and MIT are so prestigious over other universities and the numbers of Nobel Prize winners have to do with that? Quote from the article: "Robert Fogel is director of the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics"
Here's a bit of crystal ball gazing. They are/will invest heavily into nuclear power technology. China is building 70GWe of nuclear capacity by 2020 with proposals for 140GWe more. They have also established a joint venture with Russia to build two commercial BN-800 advanced sodium cooled fast spectrum Generation IV reactors. China dwarfs any other country for new nuclear builds. India, Russia, Sth Korea and Japan will also go this route. Sth Korea has recently signed a contract for $20 billion to build nuclear power plants of it's own design for the UAE. When the world is crying out for nuclear power in a decade or two to address the twin problems of climate change and the coming energy crunch, it will turn to Asia for the expertise, trained scientists, engineers and technicians and industrial capacity required. France may get a look in as well.
I don't know what you mean by "full size"... especially since 1500 years ago, people didn't exactly have satellite-based mapping of borders... or even the modern concept of "citizenship". But basically, the regions that the Qin dynasty directly administered 2200 years ago, probably contains 80% of modern China's population. The north-eastern provinces of China are now highly populated, but this only occurred in the last 80-100 years... during the time of the Qin and Tang, these were still highly nomadic areas with very low population density that no settled government could have "ruled". Typical group-speak by people who know nothing about Chinese history. There are a thousand different things that clearly tie each dynasty to the previous dynasty, including the "foreigner" Manchurian Qing to the previous dynasties. I'll give a few examples: - It was tradition that the emperors of previous dynasties were considered a form of ancestors by new dynasties... and this clearly continued with the Manchurian Qing. They paid respect to the Tang and Ming emperors accordingly. - Every dynasty would publish a clear document that served as the "official" history of China from the mythical Yellow Emperor through the previous dynasty. This has been the case for over a thousand years. The Qing court published the "24 History Books" collection 350 years ago. It, in very clear chronological order, included historical records starting from 2550 BC through the end of the Ming. And when the Qing dynasty was destroyed during the 20th century, the "Republican" government that followed it immediately updated it into a 25-book collection by adding a chapter on the Qing. The idea that China = "Han" is ridiculous. China was always a culture/civilization more than some kind of ethnically pure people. If you argue otherwise... perhaps you also think the British Royalty from 1066 on are actually French, and not English. Even today, Norman French is used for some official court purposes.
People always think of development and they forget about Wars and Natural disasters which can destroy economies.