CHINA Who will name the new world order? The accepted bipolar view of a line that magically divides the “developed” from the “developing” worlds has always been somewhat illusory, a geopolitical sleight of hand. But now, in the case of China in particular, and several other “emerging” economies in general, it has become so inaccurate as to be misleading.
Acceptance of China’s growing weight in the world, evident in the way that Chinese leaders addressed US President Barack Obama as an equal during his visit to China this week, is gaining ground. Slowly, people are coming to the counterintuitive realisation that a country with a per capita income of $3,200 a year (slightly higher than that of Iraq) is assuming world leadership in industry after industry, market after market. It is already well known that China is America’s biggest creditor nation, that this year more cars will be sold in China than in the US and that the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is the world’s largest by market capitalisation.
