Monday, August 16, 2010

China passes Japan to become 2nd biggest economy on Earth

China Passes Japan as Second-Largest Economy

begin quote:
Experts say unseating Japan — and in recent years passing Germany, France and Great Britain — underscores China’s growing clout and bolsters forecasts that China will pass the United States as the world’s biggest economy as early as 2030. America’s gross domestic product was about $14 trillion in 2009. end quote.

begin quote:
The recognition came early Monday, when Tokyo said that Japan’s economy was valued at about $1.28 trillion in the second quarter, slightly below China’s $1.33 trillion. Japan’s economy grew 0.4 percent in the quarter, Tokyo said, substantially less than forecast. That weakness suggests that China’s economy will race past Japan’s for the full year.end quote.

I first was aware that this would happen during the 1980s when I read "Megatrends" and "Megatrends 2000" which said paraphrased at that time that "China would surpass the U.S sometime in the first half of the 21st Century but that the U.S would stay militarily pre-eminent until around 2050. The prediction has proved prescient so far.

If we look down through history we witness the rise and fall of civilizations over and over again. After being misruled for almost a century during the end of the last emperors of China, China is finally moving forward again like it has several times during the last 5000 years. Simultaneously, the U.S. is in, hopefully a temporary decline caused primarily by over leveraging financially since the 1970s and countless wars since Viet Nam which has drained our resources to a great degree. The last two wars since 2001 at 9 years have been the longest wars that the U.S. has ever participated in in it's history all the way back to 1776.

So as the U.S. figures out how to proceed as a nation, China is mobilizing it's natural resources and poised to overtake the U.S. in Global output likely by 2030.

I think everyone in the U.S. needs to realize the most important thing is: "Necessity is the mother of invention".

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