Sidster - To address your other point of whether the West will let India and China get ahead of them, I think it is for the most part beyond their control. In this day and age, where, as Tom Friedman says, the world is "flat" with the relatively free flow of ideas, money and commerce, there isn't a whole lot the West can really do to stop them. And I am not sure if the West even wants to stop them. Market dynamics will dictate the balance of power in the decades to come. As the West ages, you will tend to find younger workers in larger numbers in countries like India and China, and that will drive the growth of these two economies even further.