Good morning. Good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. And welcome to the politics guys with your host, Jay Carson and Michael Baranowski.

Welcome to the politics guys. I'm Michael Baranowski, a political scientist at Northern Kentucky University.

My guest today is James Fowles, a legendary figure in American journalism and someone I've been a huge fan of for many years.

He was, as a very young man, chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. He spent two years as editor of U.S. News and World Report, had a stint as a program director,

designer, sorry, at Microsoft, and is currently a national correspondent for the Atlantic,

a magazine he's written for since the late 1970s.

His work there has won great acclaim, including a National Magazine Award.

In addition to his journalism,

Mr. Fowles is the founding chairman of New America, a think tank committed to renewing American

politics, prosperity, and purpose, and the author of numerous books on subjects as diverse as

the news media, travel, America's War in Iraq, and most recently, two books on China, postcards from

tomorrow and China Airborne. And somehow in his copious free time, he managed to become an

instrument-rated pilot. James Fallows, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, and thanks for your very

gracious introduction. Certainly. You know, I was hoping we could start with China,

which I know is a major interest of yours. Back in the 1980s, it seemed like the main Asian

threat that Americans were focusing on was Japan. But today it's clearly China. And, you know,

if you look at a graph of economic growth over, say, the last 50 years,

China is basically going nowhere until the 1990s.

And then that growth curve shoots up amazingly starting into mid-2000s.

And then, I mean, far more explosive growth than we've seen in the United States over that period.

So what happened there?

I think that the crucial turning point was actually in the

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