Is the World Economic Center of Gravity Moving to Asia?
The short answer is "yes", although not immediately, and not inevitably. My reasons for an affirmative answer are partly demographic and partly economic. Asia has a large fraction of the world's population, and their biggest economies are generally experiencing rapid growth as they narrow the gap in living standards with the West.
To start with the demographics, about 4 billion persons, or almost 60% of the world's population, live in Asia. India and China alone have about 2 ½ billion individuals. Other Asian countries with populations in excess of 100 million are Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, while Vietnam and the Philippines each have almost 100 million persons. In addition, Asia's population is growing much faster than that of either Europe or North America, so that 20 years into the future, Asians will constitute more than 2/3 of the total world population.
By contrast, the whole European Union has only about 500 million people, and the very low birth rates in almost all countries within this Union imply that its population will be falling over time, unless offset by steep levels of immigration. The United States is still growing- partly fueled by considerable immigration- but more slowly than Asia's. As a result, the populations of Europe and North America will decline over time, perhaps absolutely but surely relative to the growing numbers in the rest of the world.
Large populations alone do not have much impact on the world economy, as seen from the rather minor economic influence of both China and India prior to 1980, or the unimportance to the world economy of Sub-Sahara Africa's 800 million persons. Asia must have rapid economic growth during the coming several decades for it to become the major player in the economic world. Fortunately for them, China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and some of the other larger Asian countries discovered during the past 20 years many of the vital ingredients required to produce economic progress.
These ingredients include first of all a reliance on private companies and competition, and a much smaller role for government direction of the economy. China started along this path in the late 1970s, while India began to throw off its socialist traditions in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Second in importance is the utilization of the world economy to find markets for Asian exports, and to attract foreign capital to finance its rapid industrialization, although India has lagged far behind China in using both world capital and world markets. Most Asian countries also have recognized that human capital is the foundation of modern knowledge-based economies, and they have begun to emphasize investments in education and training.
As a result of these and related policy shifts, Asia as a whole experienced rapid economic growth during the past 20 years, and has narrowed the gap in per capita incomes with the rich countries of Europe and North America. The major Asian economies are likely to continue to grow rapidly for the next decade, and perhaps well beyond that decade, given how far behind Asian per capita incomes still are, the thirst of most of its population to become rich like the West, and the momentum their economies have built up. I say "perhaps" beyond the next decade because one cannot be sure that leading Asian countries will not shift away from growth-producing policies in the more distant future.
Its rapid growth in both per capita income and population implies that Asia's importance in the world economy will increase quite rapidly. As a result, Asia will become a far more important source of consumer demand not only for products made in Asia, but also for exports from America and the EU. In addition, it is likely that researchers and companies in Japan, China, India, and elsewhere in Asia will generate an increasing share of the world's important innovations.
Greater economic dominance of Asia does not necessarily mean that the United States will not continue to be the world's leader in per capita income and innovation. The development of Asia can stimulate the US and the EU economies by providing greater opportunities for trade, including valuable imports and large markets for its exports, and other advantages from having a more developed and larger Asia. The economic threat to the West is not Asia's development, but it is government excessive interference in the performance of markets, like the automobile bailout in the US, that may choke the very competitive system that created Western wealth, and demonstrated how to become rich to countries elsewhere.
To be sure, as the economic center shifts to Asia, that continent will expect much greater influence over international institutions, like the IMF and the World Bank, ia greater role in determining common international trade policies, more say on climate policies, and on many other world economic issues. The larger Asian countries will also expect to have a more important role in determining world security and anti-terrorist policies. On security issues and possibly on climate and some other international questions, major conflicts might well emerge between countries like China and India, and the United States and the EU.
