ABSTRACT
The accounts of American outreach that began with the Spanish-American War, especially those telling of zealous profit-seeking efforts aiming for “the China market,” should also be reviewed and corrected. The world history courses had a peculiar character in that they neglected much of the world. They began, typically, with events in ancient Egypt, followed by a consideration of Mesopotamia, the Tigris-Euphrates region. Population changes stem from four factors: births, deaths, immigration, and emigration. China’s single-child policy has a very important further consequence: smaller birth cohorts mean that smaller numbers will be entering the labor force. China has long been the world’s most populous nation. But the introduction of the single-child policy in 1979 brought some significant changes. One does not ordinarily expect persistent misrepresentation from intellectuals, persons declared to be critical in their outlooks. But the unexpected lesson shown is that intellectuals share a tendency attributed to “ordinary” citizens, namely, conformity.
