Europes time is over, they had their time, and all they could ever do was fight constantly and screw everyone over,  they are washed up, ad so will America in 50-100 years.

China is expanding but no where near as fast as people say, its current governmnet being evil oppressive and corrupt will have to go before it becoes a world power.

Iida I beleive, will make it there first.

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Now you made me laugh. EU is sick and its situation soon will become worse because it keep decreasing. The birth rate in all EU countries, old and new is terrible. Soon Europe will become the place where live only old people.

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Britain takes in between a quarter of a million and half a million legal immigrants per year from commonwealth countries, all young. This will substantially increase over the next few years with and influx from eastern Europe too. France also has similar immigration statistics and Germany is coming round. There is many times the projected labour shortfall clammering to get in from Asia and Africa and enough EU member states willing to open the door. The  only countries that will suffer from a shortage of youth are the more xenophobic eastern countries. Still europe will need a retirement home and Poland could just be the place!

China, given time.

The Prime Minister Mentor of Singapore says so!

I think the world will be less of a sole superpower playground. The US isn't going to magically shrink, and the EU's making progress (I think, I really don't know)

In 4 years, with the Beijing Olympics, we'll be able to feel the difference. In 10 years, in 20 years, in 50, in 100, the Middle Kingdom is returning to its position on the top of the world. 

Brazil is also a nation I see playing a bigger role in the future.

  China is exhausting their natural resources.

  Once their exchange rate will be adjusted to the real exchange, then they will be in real troubles.

  India is investing a lot in education.

  Brazil has large natural resources.

How about we get rid of one of the europeans then.......heck lets get rid of the US position instead........or better yet no more permanent seat since it's all a load of crap.

AMEN!!!

Fastspawn:

really simple. I was helping out a company located in San Francisco to locate metal scrap in Mexico to send to China. The price of the steel increased tremendously because the high demand in China. Even the pricing of the houses raised 5% because the current pricing for the metal commodities.

I´m working also wiht companies located in China. I have experienced decommitments on the deliveries for electronic products, because the electric power is rationalized between the industries on the area, specially at Shen Zen.

The EU should be the world's only super power now. It has by far the most powerful economy in the world, but can't get it act together at any other level.

By 2020-2030 it will have doubled in population and incorperated most of the old Warsaw Pact and will stretch from Iceland to the Pacific it will match China and India for population and oustrip them combined for resources. But will it have solved it's unity problems?

Now you made me laugh. EU is sick and its situation soon will become worse because it keep decreasing. The birth rate in all EU countries, old and new is terrible. Soon Europe will become the place where live only old people. It will ruin both its strange and economy.  And Russia will never fit to the EU requirements. Nor it want to join EU.

I think America will remain the most powerful state for at least a century or two. 

I think the French and Germans might try to get more powerful and that might put strains on the EU, perhaps making it bicker and not making it great and powerful. 

China will be more powerful, but I think they'll peak pretty soon.  China's progress is due to cheap labor which will get more expensive if workers demand more pay, and it's mainly due to foreign investment, and not domestic expansion.  I also don't think there growth rates will continue, there only growing so fast because they have such a gap to cover.  They aren't talking about sustained growth.  They'll also get more problems with democratic movements as time goes on.  I think they might be like Russia after the Napoleonic wars in that respect; a strong disposition but growing tension at home.

I can see India becoming more powerful and I can see India and America allying against the Chinese, probably with Russian support.

I think Russia will become more powerful because they have always maintained a strong position.  They will certainly not like how powerful the EU is, and probably also not have good relations with China.

Brazil I can see becoming modestly more powerful.

All of these superpowers or to be superpowers are fighting little wars of their own currently.

America: Al-Qaeda

Russia: Chechenya

India: Kashmir

China: Muslim provinces

Add to that list Iraq and 'Terror'

I think the 2008 Beijing olympics will decide. If China wins the most gold, then they are guaranteed leader of the future.

It won't be a one power world though, like the US>everyone else. I see things as China/US/EU being somewhat balanced out, with China in lead.

In... 50 years. 100 just to be polite.

"I can see India becoming more powerful"

You do realize that India has domestic growth is solely do to the reason that their integration and system as a whole is too backward for foregin investment of large amount, so When India finished building their integration and domestic growth, they would also require foreign investment and would have been no different from China, everything is not as simple as depicted, India would grow longer than China because it is more backward, China is only growing faster than U.S. because China is more backward, in the end, the U.S. will remain dominant when both India and China reach a certain limit, at least this century and possibly the next. 

Nothing really.

Just think about this tho', when a country gets the most gold in the olympics, what position in the world is it in?

"India is economically backwards but China is politically backwards.  Looking at the history of western Europe its the politically more free that reach economic sucess sooner and in a more powerfull fashion, England compared to say Spain is a good example."

No, according to writing of many top U.S. East Asian analysis, India's government is less successful than China's. They could not handle a lot of their nation's problems whereupon the more centralized Chinese government could execute their measures more effectively. India is in fact more politically backwards. Studying western Europe is a flaw, its whole society is different, for one it has a larger middle class and its trading required the rise of capitalism.

But you are talking economics again. Although China is much more centralized, it is certainly not democratic in the sense India is.

No, i'm talking about governmental success as a whole, a good government is defined by how it could feed its people, its stability its order and law, as well as its ability to successfully execute plans and new reforms without setback, India certain is more politically backward than Chna, in fact its perhaps democracy that made it such way. Had India been more autocratic, it might have been better off as suggested by many east asian experts.

Its the very fact that China is so centralized thats the prblem.  State controled societies are not as effective as free ones in establishing a sound ecconomy.

I agree with Warhead. Democracy has failed India. The way the cities of Mumbai and Shanghai are developing brings out clearly the value of authoritarianism.

Mumbai is becoming a giant slum. Already slum-voters are in a majority. They effectively block any attempt at development. Shanghai has no such problem. From whatever reports I have heard, it is becoming the greatest city in the world.

Dictatorships are also better placed in foreign policy. China can be consistent in it's geo-political strategy. India's strategy changes everytime the govt changes. Some govts of course have know strategy at all.

China is better placed to take control of global oil. Once the US retreats, China will move in rapidly.

Curiously, India's current leftist Oil minister, collected funds for China during the Indo-China war of 1962. Need one say anything more about Indian democracy.

As an Indian rightwinger, Arun Shourie, said 'In India everyone can block everything, as a result, no one can do anything.'

It is really hard to know what the world will become within one century. We know that during the 70s and 80s, Japan was the number 1 economic power: the estate of the imperial palace in Tokyo was equivalent to the estate of whole California in early 1980s, and the top 10 world banks were occupied by Japanese banks in early 1990. Japan's miracle created an unseen public fear in US. Americans at one time bashed Japanese cars on the street, and burn their products as unemployment in US was so high due to the economic deficit to Japanese exports. Japanese economic success forced Westerns to rethink their model of market economy and even their democratic values. Famous academic books such as "Japan #1" from Harvard research center was widely praises and studied. In this book, the Harvard scholar wanted American government in 80s to adopt Japanese format of top-down economic policies in order to overcome long periods of economic stagnation under Reagan administration. The suspicious and fear of rise of Japan was most apparent in puplic expression in arts and media. Many movies were often included with futuristic cities based on the present day Tokyo, and their dominance in technological inventions (Blade Runner, Alien3), or basically a consipiracy of Japanese companies that posed threat to the security of USA (Rising Sun).

My political professor (University of Alberta), who was undergraduated study in Japanese politics in Japan, told us that most scholars in 80s believed Japan would no doubt took over US as number 1 economic superpower by early 1990s. But, as we know it now, Japanese stock market collapsed with stagnation in economy in 1990. Since than, they had not found a feasible solution for it, and the present Koizumi's reform was facing pressure from strong LDP conservative force. Despite all this, Japan was still the number 2 economic power in the world.

So, what is the next superpower? My political profs. believed it WOULD be China as we witnessed how China sustained itself during the Asian Economic crisis in 97, but it was really hard to predict whether China will overcome its serious domestic problems, notably corruption (it was really heart breaking, as millions of peasants were struggling for justice everyday).

Hey all,

    Political oppression and depletion of of resources will not really hinder deveopment of China.  We can't apply Sid Meyer's Civilization games series here.  The story of the "Asian miracle," as counterintuitive as it is historical, will explain why:

    It's naive to think that political oppression is an obstacle to supremacy.  It's very much a part of that path.  Take most Asian NICS (newly industrialized countries):  what a lot of people didn't know or realize is that these countries, just decades ago, were ruled by dictators -- essentially generals who put on suits.  I'm talking about the Nationalists in Taiwan, President Li in Singapore, as well as the presidents of South Korea.  Asian politics of the past few decades defeated the notion that dictatorship = stagnate development.  In fact, even much earlier, the Japanese disproved Adam Smith's theory that the government should not interfere with the free market, because there can be no free market when there is no market to begin with, and to bring about a market in an undeveloped country, the government must sanction it, and more than doing so, it must overcome every political obstacle from tradional agriculturalists to encoaching, exploitative foreign investors.

    The method, then, of Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and Korea was to use political power to forcefully create a local market.  Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea in particular were places with dire lack of resources (by the time of the Korean war, North Korea was much more developed, and South Korea was an agricultural country.)  In order to industrialize, they need foreign investment, but the crisis here is that foreign markets will drown out the chance of local ones developing.  The relationship of a developed country to an undeveloped one is like that of a capitalist to a labor: the former owns the production of merchandise, the latter provides the cheap labor and raw materials.  If the latter is not protected by the government, meaning no tariffs are built to keep imports away, the local consumers would end up buying foreign stuffs (which are better) and the meager amount of money earned from cheap labor and seeling raw materials end up back into the pockets of foreign investors, and if this cycle continues, local economy remains stagnant.  What is needed is that money flows into local economy, and that the local market needs not compete with the global one so that it can slowly mature until it can join the global market.

    According to a book called "Embedded Efficiency" (or something like that, not sure if that's the name) by Professor Evans of UC Berkeley, the success of recent industralized country relies on precisely what I just mentioned, and two elements are necessary: 1) the government's ability to run itself efficiently for rational goals rather than for personal goals of the political factions, and 2) the government's ability to benefits different sectors of society.  The former requires a government not prone to corruption (a problem in China,) whereas the latter requires a people that are not deeply divided (a problem in India.)  Who will win first?  May be these are the problems that really need to be solved first, not oppression and resource depletion.  Modern history has proven that neither of these had hindered a nation from supremacy.

    And this is the story of the counterintuitive history of Asia.  It's no longer adequate to apply the traditional capitalist model.

Peace,

Michael

11-25-2004

Hey Tobodai and Evildoer,

    See my post above.  In brief: lack of democracy is precisely what led to the success of developing countries.  A controlled market, too, is necessary for a immature, weak economy in the face of the global machine.  This doesn't mean I'm saying political oppression is moral -- but this isn't the issue of this topic.  True democracy will not lead to rapid development.  Case in point, American, the crypto-fascist, democractic on the surface, regime, only became what it is today because of brilliant governmental manipulation of the people.

Peace,

Michael

11-25-2004

"True democracy will not lead to rapid development."

I agree. According to Chris Pattern, the last governor of Hong Kong, India was the largest democracy but also the largest economic disastar.

Hey Coolstorm,

    Keep in mind though that I'm not saying that lack of democracy is therefore a good thing.  If I were to choose between economic development and a happier population, I choose the latter.

Peace,

Michael

11-25-2004

Doesn't the former create the latter though?

I agree. Democracy is a good thing but wealth or prosperity, in my perspective, is way more valuable than democracy. An ideal society would be democratic as well as prosper. But, we also have to evaluate the situation with the consideration of the fact the countries might differ in terms of social structure, stage of development.

To take mainland China as an example, its one child policy, to me, seems to be a good policy. It is a good way of limiting the growth of population, benefiting the entire country's population and the world as well. However, such a policy is said to be against human rights by many. It is certainly not allowed in India as it is a democracy. India with its early development of democracy, is not able to enforce a policy that could solve its population problems. On the other hand, corruption is still a major problem in the country. Democracy is not a solution to everything. Especially in developing countries, an early adoption of democracy might actually be an obstacle for country planning and economic development.

Things are not always so ideal. Each country has to go through a stage of absolutism such as the absolute monarchy of Europe. All western European nations today were at a certin point in history ruled by a dictatorship or monarchy. Countries are just at different stages of political and economic development. To push the development of democracy without considering its impact on the country's development, in my perspective, is not a wise approach.

Not always.  It's in hindsight, after having computers, cell phones, and a bunch of crap we never really needed that we say, "it's so hard to imagine life without these things."  But human beings have lived for millenia without these things.  Perhaps the blissful ignorance of the past people about what technology would've evolved to today was enough to make them happy.  Do you seriously think that depression rate is lower than the past because we have new technologies?  It's not like wars and such don't exist today (worse, wars are more terrible than ever.)