Just to add China already started to combat the cost of education to try and prevent it going the way of the US. Funny how China does the opposite of the rest of us and thrives meanwhile we are all in pain town yet calling China Evil.
After visiting China many times on business, the thought that they are an "advanced" society makes me laugh. Most of China is a shithole. Even Shanghai, that mass of super skyscrapers and money, falls to pieces no more than 5 miles from the city center. Beijing is not much different. It was modernized for the Olympics yet outside of the urban renewal it is a run down city.
If you go out in the countryside you find squalor, massive pollution, and people living hand to mouth.
On the other hand, I have traveled in Malaysia extensively and find it very neat, very clean, and very civilized. Why hasn't Chinas done the same? Oh yeah, Communism.
I'll take the USA any day of the week. Yes we have problems, as does any country in the world. But it's far superior to anywhere else I have visited, for its size. When people compare, say, Switzerland to the USA, they forget that you could almost fit 3 Switzerlands in the area the size of Pennsylvania.