August 13, 2007 (LPAC)--A noted Chinese scholar, working at a prominent U.S. think-tank in Washington, decided to take a real look at the United States, and drove his car from coast to coast, traveling through many of the major cities in the American heartland. And he was flabbergasted by what he saw. "In every city you saw large areas which are totally blighted, with many people, mostly black, just walking around with no job, with nothing to do," he said. Most Chinese visitors, he explained, generally travel on the East Coast or West Coast, where the decay is not quite so obvious. But a trip through mid-America told a different story. "You can travel through China, and you will find a lot of impoverished areas, but everywhere there is building, and you have the feeling that things are at any rate moving steadily forward. Here it is different. Very little seems to be going on which would make things better," he said.