Quote from heech:
In the year 2011, the West is rich for the same reason that Paris Hilton remains rich: you were born with it. You're inheriting the wealth of past generations. The capital that your ancestors accumulated still paying off today...
The west is rich because it operates a system of liberal democracy with property rights, rule of law, relatively low corruption, reasonable business freedoms, and protections for individual and minority rights. China is not rich because it operates a repressive dictatorship with weak property rights, corrupt courts and public officials, and lack of protection for individual and human rights etc.
Numerous studies and surveys, such as the HDI index, Legatum, UN surveys etc, show a very strong correlation between individual and business freedoms, and the level of prosperity, social development, and overall happiness in a society.
The reason these two systems are operated is because the people living in and governing the different societies have chosen it. The people in the west choose it by their votes every 4-5 years, and the people in China chose it by either supporting, or failing to successfully overthrow and replace what is a very ineffective, unstable, and repressive form of autocratic rule.
If the current generation of Chinese really believe that the west just won a lottery ticket, rather than being a model to copy (as Singapore's leaders and people realised and implemented very successfully), then they will continue to miss the opportunity to achieve parity or superiority to the west. Considering they have the Hong Kong example in their own back yard (Chinese people living under a western system for a century, totally outperforming Chinese people under a Chinese system over the same time), it is even more inexcusable folly. The appropriate response is "Europe to China: you're too damn blind and foolish"