China Today and Yesterday in the Global Media

Ever since the British arrived at Canton in the eighteenth century, observers of China have predicted that the vast size of the Chinese population will generate a huge market for foreign goods, and a huge labor supply for industrial production. Many of these predictions proved false in the past, but today, they seem to have come true. Yet the media today still exaggerate or estimate in misleading ways the developmental potential of China. To what extent are they simply repeating the illusions of the past?