One senior Asian statesman, an acute long-time observer of both the US and China, concludes that China will not surpass the US as the leading power of the twenty-first century because of America’s ability to attract the best and brightest from the rest of the world and meld them into a diverse culture of creativity. China has a larger population to recruit from domestically, but in his view, its Sino-centric culture will make it less creative than the US.