Ekta Shah's Blog

Since, I grew up in India, I always learnt in history that how long we have been brutally ruled by other people. For centuries, we have been ruled by Mughals and European Countries. East India never wanted to leave, and we fought very hard for our freedom. Lord  Mountbatten said “ If we just leave, there will be chaos” Gandhi replied “ Yes, but it will be our chaos”. It shows, we wanted to be governed by own decisions, not by any body’s interferences.

No country, no company and nobody can  be a single power for a long time. Dominance is not survival and change is inevitable. First east then west, and I guess again East is rising. West has ruled the world for a long time. England was powerful for eras, and  then America and now China? According to Thomas Friedman world is flat, and according me all are rising at a same time. US taught everybody that how to do business with less taxes, what are human rights,  how to be ahead in game, how to invest in research, technology and education. It also taught, when to fight for our own selfish benefits and I guess, other countries are also catching up. May be other countries took time, but they are in game now.

The tallest building in the world is now in Taipei and will soon be overtaken by one being built in Dubai. Largest Publicly traded corporation is Chinese and biggest plane is built in Russia and Ukraine. Leading refinery is under construction in India and largest factories are all in China. And leading financial center is London and  world’s largest ferries wheel is in Singapore. Number one casino is not in Las Vegas but in Macao. The biggest movie industry, in terms of both movies made and tickets sold , is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Of the top ten malls in the world, only one is in the United States, the world’s biggest is in Beijing. China’s growth alone has lifted more than 400 million people out of poverty. The economist Jeffery Sachs puts it simply “”China is the most successful development story in world history”. We have experienced a revolution in information technology that now brings us news from around the world instantly, vividly, and continuously. Many emerging markets are piling up large surpluses, so much so that they now hold 75 percent of the world’s foreign exchange reserves. China alone has over 1.5 million dollars in its accounts. Goldman Sachs has predicted that by 2040 five emerging market countries China, India, Brazil, Russia and Mexico will together have a larger economic output than the G-7 countries, the seven western nations that have dominated global affairs for centuries. Canada is becoming a major power,and yet acting extremely responsible. The Persian gulf, where so much of the oil revenue flows, is investing more of its profits in infrastructure and industry, rather than in Swiss Bank accounts and Monte Carlo casinos. Dubai has become an efficiently run, business-friendly enter pot, a middle eastern Singapore.

China and India are becoming bigger players in their  neighborhoods and beyond. Russia has ended its post-soviet accommodation and is becoming more forceful, even aggressive. Europe acts on matter of trade and economics with immense strength and purpose. Brazil and Mexico are becoming more vocal on Latin American issues. South Africa has  positioned itself a leader of the African continent. All these countries are taking up more space in the international arena than  they did before. On  the first stage of globalization, everyone watched CNN. In the second stage, it was joined by the BBC and sky news. Now every country is producing its own version of CNN. Wall mart imports about 18 billion worth of goods from China each year. Starbucks predicts by 2010 it will have more cafes in China than US. The Goldman Sachs study projects that by 2015, India’s economy will be equal to the rise of ITALY and by 2020 will have caught up to Britain. By 2040, India will boast the worlds’ third largest economy. By 2040 India will boast the world’s third-large economy.Over next year GM alone will import one billion worth of Indian made auto parts. And India now has more billionaires than any other Asian country and most of them are self made.

Again, my intention to show all the facts is that other countries are doing phenomenal job on world’s sphere. Its not US is failing big time, but if it wont act quickly on international arena, very soon other countries will have much more higher GDP and employment rate. Craziness of international students coming to US is definitely going down but it still can try to maintain its own charisma by its creative and thoughtful education approach. Young Americans have started thinking that the latest trends- in finance,architecture,  technology- might originate in London, Shanghai, Seoul, Tallinn, or Mumbai. Its time to become more economic/technical  savvy then acting like controlling neurotic , who spends billions on wars. Its time for wake up and do reality check and save our areas of expertise like technology, education, creativity, business before they are outsourced to other country in Africa.

Note: Lot of facts have taken from the  book -Post American World by Fareed Zakaria.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 6:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.