In the 2007 Pew survey when asked whether one must believe in God to be moral. 57% of Americans said yes, but in China 72% said no.

Noted by Fareed Zakaria in The Post-American World

HKO comments- it is ethnocentric of Americans to have singular view of the world, especially from religious perspectives. Our evangelical Christian heritage is the moral justification for much of our past foreign policy expansionism. In the coming decades we will be competing in the world against nations like China and India that take a very different view of international relations that may be a welcome alternative. But is also belies the question of what can happen when a foreign policy becomes strictly concerned with commercial interests, and becomes totally unhinged from any moral basis.

America is accused of this but often inaccurately. Our relation with Israel (and others) is certainly more morally than commercially based, though it did have some political value during the cold war.

Also noted in Fareed’s book- in 2007 the World Bank offered a $5 million loan to Nigeria for a train system IF it cleaned up its corrupt rail road bureacracy. China offered $9 BILLION to rebuild the entire system with no strings attached.

It’s a new world we are in, baby.

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