The great fall of China

China's political stability may be more fragile than thought. The country faces huge domestic challenges -- an aging population lacking any form of social security, wholesale problems in the financial system that dwarf those revealed in the U.S. sub-prime loan mess and the breakdown of its health system. These problems are as big as ever, but China has fewer resources to meet them than we thought.

And there is the environment. With poor air quality, acute water shortages, massive pollution in major watersheds and many other environmental problems, China needs to make enormous investments in the environment to avoid major disasters. Globally, it will be much harder to get China -- and India -- to make any sacrifices to address problems such as global warming.

For Americans, the new numbers from the World Bank bring good news and bad. On the plus side, U.S. leadership in the global system seems more secure and more likely to endure through the next generation. On the other hand, the world we are called on to lead is poorer and more troubled than we anticipated.

Maybe the old Chinese curse says it best: We seem to be headed for interesting times.