India, Oct. 11 -- There is another weakness that Beijing cannot solve simply by lending more money: its people. China invested heavily in physical infrastructure but invested less heavily in human capital.

For a generation, the great question about China was how quickly it would overtake the United States. Its extraordinary economic rise seemed almost unstoppable. China became the workshop of the world, built the infrastructure of a modern superpower and accumulated an industrial capacity that few countries could match. But the more important question now may be a different one: can the economic model that made the country rich survive the success it created?

Without question, China remains a formidable country. It has world-class manuf...