Saturday 21 August 2010

THE CHINESE ERA

The Star - Toronto CHINA’S UNFINISHED ECONOMIC REVOLUTION

David Olive

Toronto Star, August 21, 2010

This week’s revelation that China has overtaken Japan as the world’s second-largest economy was anti-climatic. With China growing at about 10 per cent a year for the past 30 years or so, and Japan entering its third decade of stagnant growth, the change in status quo has been long expected.

Still, the milestone sparked predictable hand-wringing in many quarters. Will it be 20 or just 10 years before the Middle Kingdom also surpasses the U.S. in size? Will Beijing eclipse Washington as the corporate colonizer of Latin America, the Middle East, Indonesia and other less-developed nations?

“While the 19th was the European century and the 20th the American century, the world seems to have entered what may become known as the Chinese era,” says Jean-Pierre Lehmann, professor of international political economy at IMD, the distinguished Swiss business school.

But one has to be careful in forecasting superpower status. In the 19th century, it seemed that Russia, Brazil and Argentina were poised for economic greatness. Impressed with Canada’s rapid growth that century, Benjamin Disraeli predicted Canada’s emergence as “the new Russia.”

(...) [artículo aquí]

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