Posted on 01/14/2005 10:28:02 AM PST by Destro
'India, China may outshine US by 2020'
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 2005 10:44:02 PM ]
WASHINGTON: The rise of China and India as global players is heralding an Asian Century in place of a receding American Century, a US intelligence report said on Thursday.
In a far reaching projection, the CIA-commissioned report compared the rise of the two Asian giants to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the 20th century, and said the event will transform the world's geopolitical landscape, with impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the previous two centuries.
"In the same way that commentators refer to the 1900s as the 'American Century,' the 21st century may be seen as the time when Asia, led by China and India, comes into its own," the report titled 'Mapping the Global Future,' observed. "A combination of sustained high economic growth, expanding military capabilities, and large populations will be at the root of the expected rapid rise in economic and political power for both countries."
The report is the third in a series of five-yearly forecasts of global trends published by the National Intelligence Council, a group of senior intelligence analysts who report to the CIA director. The earlier reports were for 2010 and 2015. The forecasts for 2020 were based on consultations with more than 1,000 non-government experts at 30 conferences on five continents over the past year.
Expectedly, the 2005 report for the 2020 projection reflected the post 9/11 changes, but it also contained a degree of certitude not seen in the two previous studies, including a more upbeat assessment for India. "Barring an abrupt reversal of the process of globalization or any major upheavals in these countries, the rise of these new powers (China and India) is a virtual certainty," it predicted.
The report said while most forecasts indicate that by 2020 China's gross national product (GNP) will exceed that of individual Western economic powers except US India's GNP will have overtaken or be on the threshold of overtaking European economies. But the rise of India also will present strategic complications for the region, the report suggested. Like China, India will be an economic magnet for the region, and its rise will have an impact not only in Asia but also to the north-Central Asia, Iran, and other countries of the Middle East.
As India's economy grows, governments in Southeast Asia -- Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and other countries -- may move closer to India to help build a potential geopolitical counterweight to China, it said. At the same time, India will seek to strengthen its ties with countries in the region without excluding China.
Although the 114-page report is replete with references to the rise of China and India, it contended that despite daunting challenges "the United States will retain enormous advantages, playing a pivotal role across the broad range of issues --economic, technological, political and military --that no other state will match by 2020." But in several places in the report, the analysts conceded that the western world will see significant decline.
Dubbing China, India, and perhaps others such as Brazil and Indonesia, as 'arriviste' powers, the report said they "have the potential to render obsolete the old categories of East and West, North and South, aligned and nonaligned, developed and developing."
"Traditional geographic groupings will increasingly lose salience in international relations. A state-bound world and a world of mega-cities, linked by flows of telecommunications, trade and finance, will co-exist," it said.
Unless they start a war and annihilate each other. Make the UN happy, seeings how we got an ovepopulation problem & all.
This guy is the worst American correspondent for a foreign newspaper I have ever come across. An average of 19 out of 20 of his articles I ask myself if this guy actually lives in the U.S. or just mails it in from Bombay.
We have a fraction of the people they both do, and yet our GNP is several times more than theres.
Again, the answer to all this is democracy. Bring freedom to these countries and then it's a FREE world of people rather than a group of countries.
Free people do not attack their neighbors.
nikos
--as we spend ourselves into fiscal oblivion, on Congressional pork---
Most likely wishful thinking.
India is the world's largest democracy.
Time to polish up on my Chinese language skills.
Good, by then they'll all speak English and we can do their tech support.
Given the CIA's demonstrated accuracy at predicting the future, this report should be causing sphincters to slam shut in Beijing and New Delhi. "Dudes, we are SO doomed."
Great talking point until you go to J&K or Nagaland or Assam or Bihar or Manipur.
How many legally elected state governments has the Centre dissolved? How about "the Emergency"?
Sorry, India is a rising state, no doubt, and will be a larger actor on the global stage, but they have a long way to go and their democracy has a lot of problems.
Which countries are you writing about? while I agree with the need to democratize China, India is the largest democracy in the world (in fact, has been the largest democracy sice its independence in 1947).
I thought the same thing.
Sounds like the nonsense Goldman Sachs put out last year about India being a superpower in 2050. I tell people to look at any 50 year span and tell me who foresaw in year 1 anything remotely close to year 50.
Nonsense.
India is in a much better position than China is. China is an economic house of cards, corrupt to the max. They are exhibiting all the classic symptons of a "boom/bust" cycle, and when it busts, it will not be pretty.
Of course the article fails to report that such forecasts historically are noriously unreliable. As recently as 1989 there were projections that the Japan would overtake the US economically by 2005...Oops.
There are a long list of similar examples. Makes the arguments for better investment incentives and breaking the back of the teachers unions.
<< This guy is the worst American correspondent for a foreign newspaper I have ever come across. An average of 19 out of 20 of his articles I ask myself if this guy actually lives in the U.S. or just mails it in from Bombay. >>
Two of the most systemically corrupt squalidly socialist states in the history of our species each of them psychopathologically hesperophobic, neither of them much better than medieval serfdoms; 40% of the GNP of one of them derived from the theft and counterfeiting of American intellectual property and industrial goods, while 50% of its banks' "loans" are non-performing effective thefts and more looted money flows out than investment in -- and they are going to give their major market place a run for its money?
Sure they are.
Right after pigs fly, chinese innovate -- and communists and Indians become trustworthy.
Look at Transparency International's ratings on India and then this Index of Economic Freedom http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006108
Also, this from Freedom House http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/survey2005.htm
LOL. And true. This report is Hogwash, IMO.
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