The day the Americans and Europeans discovered that the Earth is round...

The day the Americans and Europeans discovered that the Earth is round...and there is ALSO the East of the World...THAT is the day they began to realize the threat of China



From the introduction to an excellent special issue of The New Scientist:

China's leaders are no fools. Most senior members of the central government were trained in that most practical of disciplines, engineering.
They know that the nation's present trajectory is unsustainable, both economically and environmentally. If China is to continue its remarkable development, it must transform itself from an exporter of cheap manufactured goods built to western blueprints into what its leaders call an "innovation nation" - able to sustain its growth through home-grown ingenuity.
So they are pouring huge sums into science, particularly at the applied end of hot fields like nanotechnology and renewable energy. . . [emphasis added]
Can China really reinvent itself as a lean, green technological superpower?
Will the rural poor get left behind as the urban middle class reaps the benefits of rapid economic growth?
Or will the economic miracle falter or even collapse? And can the Communist Party maintain its grip on power through it all? Will it ultimately be an engine of reform, or an obstacle to change? Will China eventually embrace democracy as it is practised in the west? Or does conflict lie ahead?


When the initial results of CRN's Global Task Force scenario project are released later this month, you'll discover that in many of the speculative future stories we developed, China is a leading player. That's no surprise for anyone who's paying attention to trends and projections, but it is another indicator that the world we'll all inhabit in 2020 will be heavily influenced by the fortunes of that great nation.

Mike Treder