Who will it be? China? India? Somebody else?
According to the National Intelligence Council 2020 Mapping the Global Future report, what are the major changes that may occur in the international landscape—and who might the major players and states be?
The overarching challenge for the next 14 years is globalization. Humanity must use it to its fullest potential; through globalization,
humanity's lot will be permanently improved. The countries best positioned to benefit from globalization are Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The BRIC nations "are most frequently identified as rising powers that will shape the geopolitical landscape of the 21st Century" (Mansingh). Developing economies that most benefit from this wave of globalization will be enriched and stabilized.
With the gradual integration of China, India, and other developing countries into the global economy, hundreds of millions of working-age adults will join what is becoming, through trade and investment flows, a more interrelated world labor market. World patterns of production, trade, employment, and wages will be transformed. (NIC)
China and India are two different nations with some similarities. Though the United States (US) has had a longer, deeper relationship with China, and though India lags behind its neighbor in economic and military respects, India is poised for huge and rapid improvement.
Western outsourcing of computer programming, data entry, and accounting has heavily impacted Indian society for the better. Foreigners invest heavily in India's infrastructure. "Hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in putting broadband connectivity... [creating] a platform from where intellectual work, intellectual capital, could be delivered from anywhere.... What you are seeing in Bangalore today is really a culmination of all those things coming together" (Friedman 6-7). India has a vibrant, established democracy and is very open to foreign investment. "India presents to the US a great opportunity to overcome Cold War history and the US has met it by forming a 'strategic partnership' with India in the past few years" (Mansingh). India has a bright future indeed.
The time has come for the Chinese. Their phenomenal economic growth over the past twenty five years has made it the manufacturing hub of the world. It is often the final assembly stage of Asian production networks, and the second most common destination (after the US) for direct foreign investment (Economist).
Countries such as China and India will be in a position to achieve higher economic growth than Europe and Japan, whose aging work forces may inhibit their growth. Given its enormous population—and assuming a reasonable degree of real currency appreciation—the dollar value of China’s gross national product (GNP) may be the second largest in the world by 2020. (NIC)
China also holds almost one trillion dollars of foreign exchange reserves, and its growing import rate promises that China will be the locomotive of growth in much of Asia and the Pacific for the foreseeable future (Mansingh). Politically, their diplomacy of reassurance to its neighbors based on the principles of peaceful coexistence and non-interference, along with its willingness to engage in multilateral
negotiations (Ibid.) assure that China is a force with which to be reckoned.
A rising tide is said to raise all boats. Nations other than China and India are sure to capitalize on globalization. "The economies of other developing countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia, could surpass all but the largest European economies by 2020" (NIC). Only time will tell how beneficial globalization will be to the world at large.
Sources:
Friedman, Thomas. The World Is Flat. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; 2006.
Mansingh, Surjit. "Rising Powers: Potential Challenges to US Power." Anne Arundel Community College, 25 April 2006.
NIC
"Pocket World Figures, 2006." The Economist.