Energy: China's Choke Point

China's accelerated political and economic changes since the emergence of Mao in the mid 20th century, colored by nearly a five-thousand-year-old culture and accentuated by centuries of unique history, have driven the once backward nation into one of the world's leading economic superpowers. A Confucian culture that includes hard work and non-questioning authority has contributed in a major way. Above all, China has been able to accomplish economic stardom without restorting to other nations' tendencies of militarism, such as the United States, wartime Japan, and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and has opted for a softer voice and patience rather than brutish machismo. China wants to be liked rather than feared, wants to be accepted than despised. This includes all its actions from foreign policy to the staging of the Olympics to the covering up of glitches and unpleasant events. Although China's ascend on the world stage is assured, a hurdle that has the potential to become its chokepoint is the fact that the country has few indigenous energy sources, other that highly polluting coal, in a world of galloping consumption with dwindling exhaustable resources. In order to tackle this challenge of finite energy, China will have to muster its own resources and shirk its need for world popularity and acceptance, embark on a number of tough and perhaps internationally unpopular tasks while retaining its responsibility to its own people and, to a large extent, the rest of the world.