>Eubulides wrote:
>
>>Yeah, good old fashioned Keynesian uncertainty precludes and or humbles any
>>conjectures we can make regarding the growth dynamics and 'deep integration'
>>processes of China and India re 2050. Seems to me the thorniest problems
>>will be, alas, in the realm of finance. Forex is only part of this larger
>>story of capacity/competence building within those institutions in
>>China/India.
>
>I think China is vulnerable partly because the foreign trade in good
>and services is about 60 to 70 % of China's GDP(The corresponding
>figure for India 20%). Global economic stagnation/crisis would have
>grave implications for China. Moreover, there is no chance that a
>one party dictatorship could pose a serious challenge to the US
>hegemony in the 21 century. Transition to a different form of
>bourgeois class rule in China may not be smooth and orderly. Whether
>China can preserve its territorial integrity (Xinjiang and Tibet) in
>the long run is also uncertain.
>
>The value of most scenarios is diminished by the undecidability
>inherent in such efforts.
Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, there was all sorts of speculation about when Japanese GDP would surpass U.S. GDP. In 1995 (!), well after Japan's bubble had burst, the Nation asked me to do a graph extrapolating, on the basis of then-current growth trends, when Japan would take over as #1. Looking back at the spreadsheet now, it looks like it was supposed to happen in 2001.
Doug