Comments on: The North as new South, the East as new West

By: Duncan

Duncan — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:25:17 +0000

Reuben,

I too keep an open mind. There was similiar talk of japan taking over the world in the 1980s.

But I do think we are, at least, moving towards a more multi-polar world. Brazil, China & India for sure will take a larger role. South Africa maybe. And possibly Indonesia, which people tend to overlook.

The big change comes if China starts consuming.

By: Reuben

Reuben — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:53:18 +0000

V interesting post. But i am actually more skeptical than some about the rise of china, how far it can be extrapolated into the future and its implictations for the global balance of power. As things stand the EU alone enjoys GDP 5 times that of China. In absolute terms the EU – probably discounting this year – EU GDP has to continued to increase by greater amound than that of China. If the EU were to stay still it would take China 20 years to fully catch up at the current rate of growth. And there is no reason to assume that will continue. (apologies btw for the wolfram alpha geekery). Chinese industry is not particularly productive but derives its competitive advantage to a great extent from extremely low labour costs – and thus the economy is vulnerable to find itself the victim of its own success. I would hazard a guess that rates of growth seen over the last ten years may have a lot to do with lewis model type economics. IE the one-time-only growth spurt that arises from masses of rural workers with extremely low rates of productivity moving to the urban/industrial sector (rural population declined from 64-45% 2001-7).

Certainly you could aggregate chinese economic power with that of countries such as Japan, S Korea and Taiwan as well as India. But that also demonstrates how problematic the idea of comparing ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ economic power is. Countries located geographically will not necessarily find themselves tied in more closely with, say, Chinese economy than that of America – especially in this era of cheap transport invisibles.

Basically what I am saying is that I really don’t want to have to learn the Chinese alphabet when im 40 – so I will comfort myself with china-skepticism.

By: Dave Semple

Dave Semple — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:00:37 +0000

By coincidence I’m in the middle of the second volume of Immanuel Wallerstein’s opus on world-systems theory. It makes for dense reading, and I’m still struggling to reconcile Wallerstein’s near-technocratic view of economic progress with the concept of class struggle. That said, I think his basic economic categories of “economic core” and different gradations of peripheral economy in the world is an interesting idea, and his notion that hegemony cannot be held indefinitely has some relevance here. After all, the replacement of the United States as the world-system hegemon is where some think China is going.