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The Ikea superstore in the port city of Dalian, China, is a blue-and-yellow monument to the global reach of Western commerce, but any shopper stumbling out through the back door would be confronted by a jaw-dropping symbol of rapidly changing times. In the docks behind the store sits a 60,000-ton aircraft carrier.
This huge ship – nearly three times the size of Britain’s sole remaining carrier, HMS Illustrious – was originally built in the Soviet Union.
Still under construction when communism collapsed, it was bought by a Hong Kong company, which claimed it was going to tow the ship to Macau and turn it into a floating hotel and casino
China had already converted two former Soviet aircraft carriers into gambling dens, so this was not as far-fetched as it sounded, but the third ship never reached Macau. It was taken to Dalian, painted in the colours of the People’s Liberation Army Navy and fitted with a flight deck and new guns and missiles.
For years, China’s spokesmen kept insisting that the ship was still going to be a casino, but last Wednesday the Chief of the General Staff came clean on the world’s worst-kept military secret.
In plain view, behind Ikea, is the first unambiguous sig
Senior officers in Beijing insist that they would never use the aircraft carrier for such a task, even though that is the only thing aircraft carriers are good for.
It is true that we will not wake up tomorrow to see Chinese jets streaking overhead. American military power still dwarfs China’s. The USA has 11 carrier groups, while China is still building its first; and, by China’s own admission, American technology is 20 years ahead.
Even so, since the Nineties, China has been rolling back America’s reach in the western Pacific. When historians a
Five years ago, I started writing my book Why The West Rules – For Now. In it I argued that geography has been the ultimate force behind Western success, but I calculated that if levels of development increase across the 21st Century at the same pace as they did in the 20th, East Asian wealth and power will catch up with the West’s around the year 2100.
It is only seven months since my book came out, but last week’s events suggest strongly that the East is, in fact, gaining ground even faster than I predicted. The next few years may be the most important since the end of the Cold War.
For 300 years, the West has enjoyed an enormous military lead over the rest, but this is now being eroded – because the West is going broke.
Last week, the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of the American economy showed that growth has slowed in several regions across the USA in May. Meanwhile, in the UK, the British Retail Consortium said that retail sales had slipped in May, and the Bank of England kept interest rates at the record low of 0.5 per cent.
The world has never seen a financial shift as abrupt as that from America to East Asia
The global balance of wealth is driven by deep forces that no individual or government can control.
In the late 19th Century, when Britain bestrode the world like a colossus, the technologies it pioneered – steamships, railroads, the telegraph – effectively shrank the world.
Instead of being a barrier, the Atlantic Ocean became a highway for trade, migration and communication, drawing the human and physical capital of North America into the British-dominated global economy.
But as this process unfolded, Americans learned to adapt British-style business to their wide-open spaces. By 1900, they were pushing Britain off the top of the pile. In the late 20th Century, the process speeded up. Container ships, jet planes and the internet shrank the world even faster.
Now it was the Pacific Ocean that turned into a highway, drawing the wealth of East Asia into the American-dominated global economy.
And in an uncanny echo of what had happened 100 years earlier, East Asians adapted American-style business to work in their own crowded spaces, threatening to shove the USA out of its top spot.
In fact, America can no more stop China’s ascent in the early 21st Century than Britain could stop America’s in the early 20th. The signs are everywhere.
First came down-market mass-produced goods, churned out in China better and cheaper than in the West. By 2004, Business Week magazine had concluded that ‘the three scariest words in US industry’ were ‘the China price’.
Now it is high-end goods. While Ikea has been setting up shop in Asia, Asia has swallowed up many of the West’s smartest brands.
Just last week, Prada, the prestigious Italian fashion house, announced that it was going public but will list its shares in Hong Kong, not Milan. The reason? East Asia is where people can afford Prada.
Half a world away, Harrods has set up 75 terminals where Mandarin-speakers can advise Chinese customers on their purchases of Louis Vuitton bags, Hermes scarves and Burberry coats.
Exclusive jewellers on London’s Bond Street, where East Asian spending has more than doubled since 2009, now have assistants trained to observe Chinese etiquette. Chinese shoppers will probably spend £165 million in London in 2011. That may double by 2013.
No one can stop the eastward shift of power and wealth; but the West can still shape the form it takes
The world has never seen a financial shift as abrupt as that from America to East Asia, and this is what is driving the parallel shift in power from West to East.
In China, where the economy has grown by ten per cent each year, military spending has quadrupled since 1996 and seems set to grow even faster across the present decade.
And rather than competing with the USA in conventional warfare, China plans to vault ahead in cyber war and space war, where big investments promise the power to take down the digital spine that holds the American military together.
In the West, by contrast, economic recovery after the 2008 collapse is faltering, and military spending is actually falling.
With Congress gridlocked over raising the debt ceiling, the American military may have to stop paying its bills in August.
In Britain, the 2010 Strategic Defence Review called for spending to fall eight per cent by 2014, and the final figure may end up being three times as high. The Navy will get two new aircraft carriers, but it might not have planes to fly off them.
No one can stop the eastward shift of power and wealth; but the West can still shape the form it takes.
After 1815, the Royal Navy’s global dominance produced 99 years without major superpower wars. Only after 1900, as British power broke down, did adventurers feel emboldened to take risks – with disastrous results.
Since 1989, the USA has been a similar kind of ‘globocop’, policing the world’s sea lanes. If America and its allies allow this to break down, adventurers may feel even bolder in the 2010s than they did in the 1910s – and the results may be even worse.
‘May you live in interesting times,’ goes an old Chinese curse. These are, certainly, interesting times.
Perhaps it is time to brush up on your Mandarin
Was this the week that China¿s rise to world dominance finally became unstoppable? | Mail Online
yes east asia is the real economy power in asia.
This huge ship – nearly three times the size of Britain’s sole remaining carrier, HMS Illustrious – was originally built in the Soviet Union.
Still under construction when communism collapsed, it was bought by a Hong Kong company, which claimed it was going to tow the ship to Macau and turn it into a floating hotel and casino
China had already converted two former Soviet aircraft carriers into gambling dens, so this was not as far-fetched as it sounded, but the third ship never reached Macau. It was taken to Dalian, painted in the colours of the People’s Liberation Army Navy and fitted with a flight deck and new guns and missiles.
For years, China’s spokesmen kept insisting that the ship was still going to be a casino, but last Wednesday the Chief of the General Staff came clean on the world’s worst-kept military secret.
In plain view, behind Ikea, is the first unambiguous sig
Senior officers in Beijing insist that they would never use the aircraft carrier for such a task, even though that is the only thing aircraft carriers are good for.
It is true that we will not wake up tomorrow to see Chinese jets streaking overhead. American military power still dwarfs China’s. The USA has 11 carrier groups, while China is still building its first; and, by China’s own admission, American technology is 20 years ahead.
Even so, since the Nineties, China has been rolling back America’s reach in the western Pacific. When historians a
Five years ago, I started writing my book Why The West Rules – For Now. In it I argued that geography has been the ultimate force behind Western success, but I calculated that if levels of development increase across the 21st Century at the same pace as they did in the 20th, East Asian wealth and power will catch up with the West’s around the year 2100.
It is only seven months since my book came out, but last week’s events suggest strongly that the East is, in fact, gaining ground even faster than I predicted. The next few years may be the most important since the end of the Cold War.
For 300 years, the West has enjoyed an enormous military lead over the rest, but this is now being eroded – because the West is going broke.
Last week, the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of the American economy showed that growth has slowed in several regions across the USA in May. Meanwhile, in the UK, the British Retail Consortium said that retail sales had slipped in May, and the Bank of England kept interest rates at the record low of 0.5 per cent.
The world has never seen a financial shift as abrupt as that from America to East Asia
The global balance of wealth is driven by deep forces that no individual or government can control.
In the late 19th Century, when Britain bestrode the world like a colossus, the technologies it pioneered – steamships, railroads, the telegraph – effectively shrank the world.
Instead of being a barrier, the Atlantic Ocean became a highway for trade, migration and communication, drawing the human and physical capital of North America into the British-dominated global economy.
But as this process unfolded, Americans learned to adapt British-style business to their wide-open spaces. By 1900, they were pushing Britain off the top of the pile. In the late 20th Century, the process speeded up. Container ships, jet planes and the internet shrank the world even faster.
Now it was the Pacific Ocean that turned into a highway, drawing the wealth of East Asia into the American-dominated global economy.
And in an uncanny echo of what had happened 100 years earlier, East Asians adapted American-style business to work in their own crowded spaces, threatening to shove the USA out of its top spot.
In fact, America can no more stop China’s ascent in the early 21st Century than Britain could stop America’s in the early 20th. The signs are everywhere.
First came down-market mass-produced goods, churned out in China better and cheaper than in the West. By 2004, Business Week magazine had concluded that ‘the three scariest words in US industry’ were ‘the China price’.
Now it is high-end goods. While Ikea has been setting up shop in Asia, Asia has swallowed up many of the West’s smartest brands.
Just last week, Prada, the prestigious Italian fashion house, announced that it was going public but will list its shares in Hong Kong, not Milan. The reason? East Asia is where people can afford Prada.
Half a world away, Harrods has set up 75 terminals where Mandarin-speakers can advise Chinese customers on their purchases of Louis Vuitton bags, Hermes scarves and Burberry coats.
Exclusive jewellers on London’s Bond Street, where East Asian spending has more than doubled since 2009, now have assistants trained to observe Chinese etiquette. Chinese shoppers will probably spend £165 million in London in 2011. That may double by 2013.
No one can stop the eastward shift of power and wealth; but the West can still shape the form it takes
The world has never seen a financial shift as abrupt as that from America to East Asia, and this is what is driving the parallel shift in power from West to East.
In China, where the economy has grown by ten per cent each year, military spending has quadrupled since 1996 and seems set to grow even faster across the present decade.
And rather than competing with the USA in conventional warfare, China plans to vault ahead in cyber war and space war, where big investments promise the power to take down the digital spine that holds the American military together.
In the West, by contrast, economic recovery after the 2008 collapse is faltering, and military spending is actually falling.
With Congress gridlocked over raising the debt ceiling, the American military may have to stop paying its bills in August.
In Britain, the 2010 Strategic Defence Review called for spending to fall eight per cent by 2014, and the final figure may end up being three times as high. The Navy will get two new aircraft carriers, but it might not have planes to fly off them.
No one can stop the eastward shift of power and wealth; but the West can still shape the form it takes.
After 1815, the Royal Navy’s global dominance produced 99 years without major superpower wars. Only after 1900, as British power broke down, did adventurers feel emboldened to take risks – with disastrous results.
Since 1989, the USA has been a similar kind of ‘globocop’, policing the world’s sea lanes. If America and its allies allow this to break down, adventurers may feel even bolder in the 2010s than they did in the 1910s – and the results may be even worse.
‘May you live in interesting times,’ goes an old Chinese curse. These are, certainly, interesting times.
Perhaps it is time to brush up on your Mandarin
Was this the week that China¿s rise to world dominance finally became unstoppable? | Mail Online
yes east asia is the real economy power in asia.
