great power politics

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Uri Dadush and Bennett Stacil have released The G20 in 2050, in which you learn the following:

China will become the world’s largest economy in 2032, and grow to be 20 percent larger than the United States by 2050. Over the next forty years, nearly 60 percent of G20 economic growth will come from Brazil, China, India, Russia, and Mexico alone. However, these emerging markets will not rise among the world’s richest countries in per capita terms: their average income in 2050 will still be 40 percent below that of the G7 states today. The end of the decades-old correlation between economic size and per capita income will have profound effects on global economic governance.

Hmmm.... yes, this sounds familiar:

  

Studies by Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank on growth trends for big developing economies contains some startling predictions. By 2010, the annual growth in aggregate demand from Brazil, Russia, India, and China will be greater than the combined growth of the United States, Japan, Germany, Italy, and Great Britain. By 2020, China and India are projected to have the second and third largest economies.  By 2025, the annual growth in aggregate demand from the four leading developing economies will be twice that of the G-7.  By 2030, the combined purchasing power of China's and India's consumers is projected to be five times that of today's United States.  While simple extrapolations from the recent past can be misleading, economic and demographic trends suggest that growth of India and China will shift what is currently a bipolar economic distribution of power into a more multipolar world.

As the number of actors increases, the likelihood of creating a concert of common preferences among them necessarily declines.  This holds with particular force if these countries achieve great power market size while still having low per capital incomes.  In addition to the current tension between the American and European varieties of capitalism, another source of preference divergence could emerge among the great powers:  the tension between rich countries willing to trade off economic growth for quality of life issues, and still-developing countries that are more reluctant to sacrifice growth.

My latest column for Newsweek International is now available.  It looks at optimistic and pessimistic modes of thought with regard to China's future, and suggests that they can both be right: 

I belong to the third camp—the one that believes that the Bubblers and the Extrapolators can both be right. My camp looks at China and sees the parallels with America's rise to global economic greatness during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From an outsider's vantage point, America looked like a machine that could take immigrants and raw materials and spit out manufactured goods at will. By 1890, the U.S. economy was the largest and most productive in the world. As any student of American history knows, however, these were hardly tranquil times for the United States. Immigration begat ethnic tensions in urban areas. The shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy led to fierce and occasionally violent battles between laborers, farmers, and owners of capital. With an immature financial sector, recession and depressions racked the American economy for decades.

It is not contradictory for China to amass a larger share of wealth and power while still suffering from severe domestic vulnerabilities. From the perspective of the rest of the world, however, this is not a good thing.

As for why it's not a good thing, well, you'll have to read the whole article. 

CLOSING SCENE OF "THE SECURITY COUNCIL CLUB":

INT. SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBER - DAY -- we see the U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL enter the Security Council room and pick up an essay. 

CHINA (voice-over)

Dear Mr. Secretary-General, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in Security Council session for whatever international problem that we failed to address.  But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care?

You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.

But what we found out is that each one of us is an economic engine...

 UNITED STATES (voice-over)
...and a military power...

 RUSSIA (voice-over)
 ...and a basket case...

 EUROPEAN UNION (voice-over)
 ...and a princess...

  IRAN (voice-over)
  ...and a rogue state...

 CHINA (voice-over)
     Does that answer your question?
       Sincerely yours, the Security Council Club.

     We see SUSAN RICE walking across the football field
     as she thrusts her fist into the air in a silent cheer
     and freezes there.

Fade to....