> Do people think China could have been kept backwards forever?

its what the vice prez literally said in a speech; you can look it up on youtube...

fwiw, i have no idea if people that say such things are sincere but sending 100's of billions of dollars investment to china doesn't sound like they expected them to take it and turn around into their biggest competitors otherwise they would never have done it imo... but i'm not a billionaire so what do i know ^^y