Where do I begin?

1.) "you really need to read your history of the United States to realize that all countries go through the same growth cycle (sic)."

First of all, there is a difference between US history and world history. You will not study the "growth cycle " of other countries by reading American history.
However, if you did study the history of other counties you would realize that they differ greatly from US history including the development of there economies. A very large part of a country's economic development depends on thier interaction with other more powerful countries, thier natural resources, and last but not least, their form of government. Freedom is a very important part of that formula. Totalitarian regimes tend to keep the wealth of the nation for themselves, for the elite governing class. This is the case in China. The populous will not recieve its fair share. Prosperity will not be shared. The playing field never level. You have applied a "free market" principle to a totalitarian system . Its a common mistake. I made the same mistake myself when I first looked at the situation back in the 1980's. I though very much the same things you do. But I kept reading.

2.)"we had people working for less than a $1.00 a day."

Thats very true. And we had people working for 25 cent per day at one time. And we had people working for 15 cents per day even before that. Its a mostly pointless statement without context. Let me take your side for a moment and color in the context that I think you may have intended. Perhaps a skilled laborer working for Henry Ford at about the birth of mass production and the industrialization of America made something like a dollar a day. I assume thats what you are referring to for comparison to China's present step through the industrial threshold.
Well, lets look at that period of American history and compare it to China's present situation and see if there really are parallels. And actually there are many. Wealth in America, at that time, became very concentrated among a very small elite class that had enormous power. We refer to them now as the "robber barons". That much we do have in common with China. In America there were many industries controlled by one person or one company. These were called monopolies. These were ultimately considered a distructive force for the free market because they elliminated competition. Elliminating competition not only held prices high, it kept wages low. Eventually , the Federal government stepped in and passed new laws to correct this problem and return ballance to the free market. This is where our history and our democracy and freedom alter the course away from the present situation in China.

3.) "Time and prosperity will level the playing feild"

That is a true enough statement as long as you are dealing with free societies. Its not true if you have a ruling class that is hoarding wealth and bilking a cowed populous.