so why are we beginning in Rolla, Missouri,

showing you a bunch of middle-age blue-collar workers

wandering around a job fair?

Do you have any office positions open?

-Currently, no. -No?

KOPPEL: Because China is where their jobs went.

China -- which relates how, exactly,

to Mexican migrant workers

picking cotton in North Carolina?

Well, that's where the cotton is going -- China.

WOMAN: Sit down, please.

Boys and girls, l feel a little cold.

l think l need some clothes.

KOPPEL: Don't worry.

That North Carolina cotton will be back

as soon as Chinese workers have milled it

and cut it and turned it into...

CHlLDREN: ...a hat...

a T-shirt...

a dress.

KOPPEL: lt won't occur to these children for some years to come,

but they are being trained

to compete in the global marketplace.

l used to work at Briggs & Stratton

and l'm unemployed and l'm looking for a job.

KOPPEL: American unemployed, Chinese children,

Mexican migrant workers.

They don't know one another.

They may not even care about one another.

But as you'll see,

they're all having an impact on one another's lives.

WOMAN: A 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit

in midafternoon...

MAN: ...report that schools and dormitories have all collapsed.

WOMAN #2: ...puts the death toll at more than 55,000.

The spectacle of a profound national tragedy

has a way of erasing differences.

We can all relate to people who never had much

and who've lost what little they had.

"There but for the grace of God," we say.

The earthquake struck a region of China's heartland

that the government has targeted for growth.

All we've been seeing these last couple of months, though --

what has engaged our attention and compassion --

is the massive destruction --

the loss of so many homes, so many schools,

the death of so many tens of thousands,

so many children.

We look at these scenes,

and even those among us who feel no connection

or even kinship with the Chinese

can empathize.

"There but for the grace of God."

We are all vulnerable,

and these days, we are all interdependent.

We'd been working for months in southwestern China

near where the earthquake struck.

Our base was the biggest city

that most Americans have never heard of --

Chongqing.

That's where it is on the map, along the Yangtze River

about 1 ,500 miles southwest of Shanghai.

[ Horn honks ]

lt's a city with an attitude,

a place that has something to prove.

And once we've shown you

a few of the things that are happening in Chongqing,

you'll begin to understand why China and the United States

might have a very difficult time

getting along without each other anymore.

The signs of interdependence are everywhere.

The city is blossoming

with the icons of American brands

like Ford, Ethan Allen, and Wal-Mart,

and that's merely scratching the surface.

Love it or hate it,

our economic futures seem irrevocably linked.

lt's a reality. Get used to it.

Let me set the scene for you.

A downtown square in Chongqing ringed with upscale shops,

most of them selling products

that would be completely out of reach,

unthinkably expensive for most Chinese.

And yet there is a new and rapidly growing class

of Chinese who can and do shop here,

people for whom price is no object --

hundreds of thousands,

perhaps even millions of such people --

a huge, new, and expanding market

for high-end Western goods.

But China's new wealths and its growing middle class

are still dwarfed by its hundreds of millions

who live just at the edge of survival.

The brutal truth

is that China can barely take care of its people.

There are simply too many,

which is why you see murals all over the countryside

proclaiming the government's one-child policy.

That's been the law for decades now.

To this day, the government will impose a hefty fine,

sometimes amounting for the poor to half a year's salary or more,

on a couple that has a second child.

lf anything, that has made children

especially precious to the Chinese.

Perhaps the worst unintended consequence

of that one-child policy

is that the earthquake left so many families childless.

lf they're still young enough to have children

and if they can prove their loss,

those families will now be granted the right to try again.

[ Shouting in Chinese ]

They love children. They really do.

But their government is trying to cope

with the largest population in the world,

competing for very limited resources.

You need to be able to look past the images

of regimented youngsters wearing the symbolic red kerchiefs.

There are tens of millions of these children

and hundreds of millions

of their desperately poor adult relatives.

They all need to be employed and housed and fed,

and Communism didn't do it.

What's beginning to do the job is capitalism.

As for that massive population base of poor people,

they are China's weakness and its strength.

Call it the Chinese paradox.

CHlLDREN: A...

B...

C...

KOPPEL: They are little engines of ambition...

WOMAN: W...

X...

Y...

Zed.

Okay. Very good.

KOPPEL: ...all but vibrating

with the earnest desire to succeed.

And all over China, from earliest childhood on,

English and computer literacy

are being drummed into their little heads.

China has big plans for this generation.

Their skills will far exceed those of their parents,

but that's down the road.

For the time being,

China's most significant contribution

to the global economy

remains cheap, reliable labor.

Line 'em up, snap it on,

plug it in, check it out, send it off.

Snap it on, plug it in, check it out, send it off.

Snap it on, plug it in, check it out, send it off.

Snap it on, plug it in, check it out, send it off.

lt's an endless, mindless, bottomless pit of a job.

Anyone who's ever worked an assembly line

can tell you about the pressure and the boredom and the fatigue.

But if they don't like it -- and many of them don't --

there is a vast labor force of Chinese countrypeople --

peasants and farmers --

more of them than the combined populations

of the United States and all of Europe,

desperate to take their places.

And that is where it all begins.

CROWD: 5...

4...

3...

KOPPEL: ln November of 2007,

a demolition company in Las Vegas, Nevada,

fulfilled its contract

to bring down the old Frontier Casino and Hotel.

lt was done in quintessentially American style...

[ Alarm blaring ]

...quickly, efficiently, totally,

the debris loaded onto trucks and headed for landfill.

[ Shouting in Chinese ]

What this is not...

...is a simple demolition project.