I think the author missed the point that the amazing growth we see in China today is what America already experienced in the 19th and 20th century. There were factories everywhere and we were building our brains out on fresh land - the building of high-tech skyscrapers was a symbol of Americas financial and industrial growth.

The stagnation is the result of a country with a very comfortable population thanks to all that industrial growth. Comfortable people do not like discomfort and is adverse to the unkind conditions of menial labor. China will one day face the same situation. Young people will have no desire to toil laboriously in discomfort. They'll import more foreigners, there will be anti-immigrant sentiment, then factories start leaving for the next cheap labor promise land. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.