China is an effective, centralized, and bureaucratic state, experiencing an economic revolution whose ripple effect makes a significant difference to the way other human beings make their livings throughout a large part of the world. (Strayer 2009)  Robert Strayer was not describing China in the twenty first century, he was referring to China around a thousand years ago!  I have to admit that I had no idea China was that advanced and such a world power so long ago.  Their ripple effect was surely felt throughout what Strayer referred to as, the civilized world, at the time.  Among other things the Chinese invented was paper and movable type, which allows me to write this, some one thousand years later.  Add to that list gunpowder, salt production by solar evaporation, and the magnetic compass and we start to get an idea why Europe was in the dark ages!  It is ironic today because I for one tend to view China as a immensely antiquated country that is finally modernizing at a maniacal rate, but that is clinging to a dying political model in communism.  Yet as history does indeed repeat itself, China is now a superpower with immense economic and military might, that allows it to shape the dialogue, and sit a the table (U.N. Security Council) with the other most powerful countries in the world, including the United States.