Will Durant on the future of China (1935)

This nation, after three thousand years of grandeur and decay, of repeated deaths and resurrections, exhibits today all the physical and mental vitality that we find in its most creative periods; there is no people so adaptable to circumstance, so resistant to disease, so resilient after disaster and suffering, so trained by history to calm endurance and patient recovery.  Imagination cannot describe the possibilities of a civilization mingling the physical, labor and mental resources of such a people with the technological equipment of modern industry.  Very probably such wealth will be produced in China as even America has never known, and once again, as so often in the past, China will lead the world in luxury and the art of life.

No victory of arms, or tyranny of alien finance, can long suppress a nation so rich in resources and vitality.  The invader will lose funds or patience before the loins of China will lose virility; within a century China will have absorbed and civilized her conquerors, and will have learned all the technique of what transiently bears the name of modern industry; roads and communications will give her unity, economy and thrift will give her funds, and a strong government will give her order and peace.  Every chaos is a transition.  In the end disorder cures and balances itself with dictatorship; old obstacles are roughly cleared away, and fresh growth is free.  Revolution, like death and style, is the removal of rubbish, the surgery of the superfluous; it comes only when there are many things ready to die.  China has died many times before; and many times she has been reborn.

~ Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage, "Revolution and Renewal," pp. 822-823 (1935)