The prolific Brad DeLong, an economist here at Berkeley (where I am a visiting scholar), makes a good case for the US to do everything it can to help China and India to develop.

It is very important for the late-twenty first century national security of the United States that, fifty years from now, schoolchildren in India and China be taught that America is their friend and that did all it could to help them become rich. It is very important that they not be taught that America wishes that they were still barefoot and powerless, and has done all it can to keep them so.