New giants are appearing on the horizon: China, India and the other “Asian tigers” account for over 50% of the world’s gross domestic product.
The New Giants, take Center Stage
The Times They Are A-Changin’, the world is changing. Moreover, new players are making giant strides on the world economic scene. In the past, the competition was always between the east and west banks of the Atlantic Ocean, but the situation has been changing ever since the advent of globalization. As Mario Deaglio points out, Europe and North America are no longer the leading performers on the world economic stage. Paraphrasing Karl Marx, new specters—whose true colors have yet to emerge totally—are making their presence felt on the economic markets, due partly to the disappearance of the USSR: over 50% of world growth may now be assigned to China, India and the “Asian tigers.”
While China is already a giant with an almost “double digit” growth rate in its GDP, other countries are about to reach the same level. And if, in addition to Beijing, Russia, India and Brazil also take off—so Dominick Salvatore notes—profound changes in the world balance might well ensue. Chinese industry and the Indian services sector will provide constant competition from now on, and Russia and Brazil will pose new challenges in the fields of base industry and raw materials, particularly oil in the case of Moscow. China’s sudden eruption onto western markets has, after all, been helped along by the end of the Multifiber Agreement (MFA), which resulted in total trade liberalization in the textiles sector since the beginning of 2005. And this will provide the first real testing ground to see how the liberalization of markets might provide solutions to competition from the new giants. For instance, we will see how Europe will be able to take advantage of spin-offs from this liberalization process, seen as providing opportunities and not just threats.
In this general framework—as Norbert Walter analyzes it—new enlarged Europe will have to learn to find its own niche, its own place and role, not just on an economic level but also from a political viewpoint. And while the reference model will still inevitably be of a western matrix, we will need to pay due heed to challenges from the east, matching the competition more in terms of quality than quantity, possibly exploring new forms of cooperation capable of taking advantage of privileges in all areas.
But leaving aside the purely economic scene, what we need to realize or rather—as André-Yves Portnoff and Luigi Passamonti point out in their analysis—what we should hope is that the growth of new world giants continues, since the peace and stability they bring with them will open up fresh prospects for a brighter future. Therefore, the laws of the free market will move hand-in-hand with the democratic development of the “new giants.” They must also be able to combine economic growth with other demands and priorities, first and foremost in health-care and environmental sectors.
The Projects section is also devoted to the giants of architecture, once again a prerogative of Asian growth. As it strives to attain record new heights (a bamboo-shaped tower over half-a-kilometer high), the Taipei 101 skyscraper is an example of bold modernism striving to combine people and ideas, as is also the case with the Daewoo Tower in Suyong Bay or Tokyo’s Millennium Tower.
