An educated middle class is a key factor

Comments on You Nuo's column "Needed: a series on the fall of big powers" (China Daily, January 15, 2007)

A uniformly well off and well educated middle class is a key factor that makes up a great industrial power. There are perhaps no better examples to this since World War II than countries like Germany, France, Japan, and particularly the United States.

Sustained efforts will be required for many decades to come to gradually shift the peasants up towards that category before China can be considered a truly great industrial power.