"We have this debate in America that is almost a theoretical debate about the role of government in the economy and whether government should be involved, and I worry that while we're having this theoretical debate, on the other side of the world, the Chinese government is vigorously promoting industry after industry, the German government is vigorously promoting its manufacturing center, the South Korean government is vigorously promoting its manufacturing sector - and by the time we've resolved our debate, there won't be any industries left to compete in. You don't want to see if this is one of those things that is an unlikely situation but once it happens could have a huge seismic global effect, because then the cost of dealing with the after-effects is just cataclysmic." There are events that economics call low-probability, high-impact events that you don't want to test. I think, more importantly, there is a high enough risk here that this is surely a game we don't want to play. "I tend to think it will be catastrophic. What we don't have is a political system that can take the simple measures to deal with our short-term deficit." And we have the best universities in the world. "We have the leading companies and the leading sectors in the advanced industrial world, we have an incredibly dynamic society, and we have high levels of entrepreneurship. It's not possible for two countries to be the leading dominant political power at the same time."įareed Zakaria is the host of CNN's international affairs program GPS, an editor at large for Time magazine and a columnist for The Washington Post. "So as China expands its role in Asia, whose role is diminishing? Of course, the established power - the United States. "Politics and power is a realm of relative influence," he says. If we didn't have the rest of the world growing, the United States economy would be in much worse shape than it is today."īut Zakaria cautions that the economic growth around the world - and the benefits that global economic stability create - do not extend to the political arena. "The more countries that get rich the larger the world economy, the more people there are producing, consuming, investing, saving, loaning money. "In economic terms, the rise of the rest is a win-win," he says. He says America is now heading toward what he calls a "post-American" world, in which the United States' share of the "global pie" is much smaller - as the rest of the globe begins to catch up. "And we are all witnesses to this phenomenon."Īmerica, Zakaria says, is also starting to lag behind other countries in education, building a competitive workforce, and fostering new energy and digital infrastructure to support those workers - all markers of long-term economic growth. "The result is you have countries all over the world thriving and taking advantage of the political stability they have achieved, the economic connections of a global market, the technological connection into this market," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. Zakaria, the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS and an editor at large for Time magazine, charts the fall of America's dominance and the simultaneous rise of the rest of the world in his book The Post-American World: Release 2.0, which shows how the collapse of communism and the Soviet empire - as well as the rise of global markets - has leveled the playing field for many other countries around the world. more troublingly, also losing key grip on indices such as patent creation, scientific creations and things like that - which are really harbingers of future economic growth." "The tallest building in the world is now in Dubai, the biggest factory in the world is in China, the largest oil refinery is in India, the largest investment fund in the world is in Abu Dhabi, the largest Ferris wheel in the world is in Singapore," notes Fareed Zakaria. Thirty years ago, the United States dominated the world politically, economically and scientifically.
Zakaria says the world is now experiencing what he calls "the rise of the rest," where countries around the world are growing at previously unthinkable rates. Dubai now boasts the world's largest building, Burj Khalifa.
0 kommentar(er)
