The Power Shift to the East: The ‘American Century’ Is Ending

The world economic landscape is rapidly changing and a very different world is emerging. There seems to be satisfactory evidence for a great and rapid shift of wealth and power to China and India. The transfer of power from the West to the East is gathering pace since the late 1990s, and Washington think-tanks have been publishing thick white papers charting Asia’s, and China’s in particular, rapid progress in microelectronics, nanotech, and aerospace, and printing gloomy scenarios about what it means for America’s global leadership. By the year 2020, the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC) predicts, China will be an economic powerhouse, vying with the United States for global supremacy. Asia ‘s rise is just beginning, and if the regional great powers can remain stable while improving their policies, rapid growth could continue for decades. In the coming decades, how these Asian giants integrate fully with the world economy will largely shape the 21st century global order. All these powerful trends may soon be followed by increasing concentration of geopolitical strength in Asia as well. Winds of change are blowing everywhere. The rise of China and India as major economic powers is changing the shape and the pattern of the world system. The world today is too complicated for any single power to dominate it, and the US is trying to maintain its hegemony by relying on diminishing assets.