China Is Trying To Build A New World Order
The clue is in the name. The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) groups six countries--China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan--and aims to be the dominant security institution in its region; but its origin and purposes are largely Chinese.
So it looks rather worrying from a Western point of view that the group has agreed to expand and that India, Pakistan and Iran are all keen to join: the rise of a kind of China-led NATO to which even America's friends, such as India and Pakistan, seem drawn. Yet that is to misunderstand the sort of organisation the SCO aspires to be. It does indeed pose a challenge to the American-led world order, but a much more subtle one.
On September 11th and 12th the SCO held its 14th annual summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan's capital. It agreed to adopt procedures for expansion, first for those countries that are already observers. India and Pakistan are likely to join in the next year. Iran is at present disqualified because it is under UN sanctions. Another observer, Mongolia, is a democracy and has long had qualms about joining what looks like a club for authoritarians. Afghanistan, the final observer, has other priorities.
The SCO summit came hot on the heels of one held by NATO, in Wales. This gave columnists in China and Russia the chance to tut-tut about the "20th-century" or "cold war" or "confrontational" mentality that animates NATO, and to boast about what makes the SCO different from what Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has called such "relics of a past era", with the rigid discipline imposed by particular blocs of countries.
In August the SCO held its largest joint military exercises yet, an anti-terrorist drill in Inner Mongolia in China involving more than 7,000 personnel. The SCO's boosters, however, insist it is not an alliance, like NATO, but a "partnership", with no adversary in mind. That is not entirely true. It has always been explicitly directed against three enemies, even if they are only abstract nouns: the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism. China, in Xinjiang; Russia, in Chechnya; the Central Asian members, in the Ferghana Valley and on their borders with Afghanistan. All SCO members face a threat from Islamist extremism. Continue reading... click HERE.
China As World's Dominant Superpower - Impact On America, Russia And EU
Here is a fact beyond dispute: China is set to become the world’s largest economy. The only debates are by what date and by what measure?
According to the IMF, Asian economies will represent at least 40% of global economic output by 2015, when adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP - which is just a way of saying that a McDonald’s hamburger should be similar cost everywhere and if it is not, we need to make an allowance in exchange rates to calculate the true relative value of a nation’s economy).
Many economists expect that on PPP calculations, China will overtake the United States long before 2020, probably by 2015-17. All global economists agree it is only a matter of time, by whatever measure. Leaders in developed nations should be ready for a major psychological, economic, cultural and political shift, which will impact the rest of this century.
Reality gap in perception of China’s future
I lecture to tens of thousands of people, in up to 25 nations a year. I also correspond with over 42,000 followers on Twitter, 2,000 on Linkedin, and on YouTube or my own Website bulletin boards with representatives of another million or two a year. Here is what I observe:
Most people I talk to in developed nations are really struggling to understand the deeper implications of the rise of China, to really comprehend what it all means, the scale of this gigantic convulsion on the global stage.
Take the United States: both Presidential candidates fought electoral battles with similar messages about American being the greatest nation on earth, and the need to keep America so. Their messages were somewhat out of step with the uncomfortable reality that China is about to become, on simple economic terms, the most powerful economic force on the planet. Continue reading.. pls click HERE.
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