7 These are interesting and potentially important developments. Underlying the answer to the questions of what they portend, is the answer to the basic question of whether the economic center of gravity of the world will continue its shift of recent decades toward Asia – in particular, to China or, perhaps, to China and India.
This shift would represent a return in some key respects to the global order of two centuries ago and earlier, before the economic rise of the West. A partial answer to that question is that China is for some time likely to continue to grow faster than the rest of the world and thus to produce an increasing share of global output.