Megatrends

I read these two books during the 1980s, the first was "Megatrends" and the second was "Megatrends 2000". There is a related book called "Future Shock" by Toffler also.

In the megatrends books I remember underlining the fact that Paraphrased now, "China will be the economic power on earth by 2050 but the U.S. will still be the primary military power until 2050"

What this means in real terms for us here in 2010 is that: China is moving towards economic and then military pre-eminence.

The problem with this is China is not at all like europe or the United States in the way it treats it's people. There are the have's and there are the have nots "And never the twain shall meet". At least in Europe and the United States everyone has some chance of becoming rich or semi-rich someday. This is not at all true in China. Instead it is in China, "Everyone has the chance one day so they might have enough food to eat and not starve to death." This makes a very different culture than Europe or the United States or the rest of the western world.

Fear is much more deep seated in China among the people and any harm done to groups there is primarily greeted with "At least that wasn't my family or my group" by those who were not harmed directly. So en masse there is never "That's wrong or Stop it!" Which is entirely different than the western world. So most of us in the western world cannot even imagine what it is like living in China for the undereducated and underpriveliged there. For the lower economic half of China it really hasn't changed at all there for about 5000 years. And this is what the rest of the world needs to understand.

So, if China doesn't float it's Yuan(increment like a dollar) on the world economic platform which it has refused to do so far and continues to undervalue it because it can afford to, the western world will continue to shrivel up and China will economically slowly take over everything on earth.

Countries slowly will enact trade barriers and there will be trade wars but the problem with trade wars is that they are self defeating in that trade wars enacted long enough create real wars with real bloodshed. Because if China can't make money in trading with a nation it doesn't have any reason not to conquer that nation. So unless the western world acts as a combined block to China devaluing the money in all western cultures it will eventually take over the whole world economically and eventually the political systems on earth will all resemble China.