The economy of the People’s Republic of China is the second largest in the world after that of the United States with a GDP of $7.8 trillion(2008) when measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis. It is the third largest in the world after the US and Japan with a nominal GDP of US$3.5 trillion(2007) when measured in exchange-rate terms.^[5] China has been the fastest-growing major nation for the past quarter of a century with an average annual GDP growth rate above 10%.^[6] China’s per capita income has grown at an average annual rate of more than 8% over the last three decades drastically reducing poverty, but this rapid growth has been accompanied by rising income inequalities.^[7] The country’s per capita income is classified in the lower middle category by world standards, at about $2,660 (nominal, 104th of 179 countries/economies), and $5,300 (PPP, 105th of 179 countries/economies) in 2007, according to the IMF. Wikipedia

While Fareed Zakaria indulges in historical information and data, Parg Khanna has a world traveler distinguishes between statistics and trends.”There are plenty of statistics that will still tell the story of America’s global dominance: our military spending, our share of the global economy and the like. But there are statistics, and there are trends. To really understand how quickly American power is in decline around the world…”

• China currently owns about $700 billion worth of our Treasury bonds — by far the most in the world.
• * According to reports, State Department officials had originally proposed that India be included in the itinerary of Clinton’s current first official tour abroad, but she struck it out.
• * Gold is hovering around a $1,000 an ounce, which is within striking distance of a record.

About a century ago Dr. Sun Yet Sen made a fortuitous observation and a prediction. This  prodigious writing in nature and amazingly right on the money.

With the invention of modern machines, the phenomenon of uneven distribution of wealth in the West has become all the more marked. Intensified by crosscurrents, economic revolution was flaring up more ferociously than political revolution. This situation was scarcely noticed by our fellow- countrymen thirty years ago. On my tour of Europe and America, I saw with my own eyes the instability of their economic structure and the deep concern of their leaders in groping for a solution. I felt that, although the disparity of wealth under our economic organization is not so great as in the West, the difference is only in degree, not in character. The situation will become more acute when the West extends its economic influence to China. We must form plans beforehand in order to cope with the situation. After comparing various schools of economic thought, I have come to the realization that the principle of state ownership is most profound, reliable and practical. Moreover. it will forestall in China difficulties which have already caused much anxiety in the West. I have therefore decided to enforce the principle of the people’s livelihood simultaneously with the principles of nationalism and democracy, with the hope to achieve our political objective and nip economic unrest in the bud.Dr. Sun Yet Sen, first Chinese revolutionary who ended the Chinese monarchy around 1911

Parag Khann waves goodbye to hegemony and depicts a hair raising picture of the world a few years from now.

At best, America’s unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but that was also a decade adrift. The post-cold-war “peace dividend” was never converted into a global liberal order under American leadership. So now, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing — and losing — in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the 21st century: the new Big Three. Not Russia, an increasingly depopulated expanse run by Gazprom.gov; not an incoherent Islam embroiled in internal wars; and not India, lagging decades behind China in both development and strategic appetite. The Big Three make the rules — their own rules — without any one of them dominating. And the others are left to choose their suitors in this post-American world. Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation. This essay is adapted from his book, “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order,” to be published by Random House in March.

It is 2016, …the Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline. Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation. This essay is adapted from his book, “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order,” to be published by Random House in March.

While Parag Khanna’s prodigious book on a multipolar world was a theoretical exercise, it fortuitously documented the events that the world is witnessing. Like many Harvard monographs, the book could have one of the many gathering dust on book-shelves. It is however used as discourse in many parts of the world. While the Indians for obvious reasons have ignored it, the Chinese Peoples Daily has discussed it many times.  The book, as biased as it it, does have many kernels of truth. What makes this book unique is the fact that it simply states “India has missed the boat”, the new Superpower is China. Decades of change have been compressed into months and weeks because of the Mortgage crisis and the ensuing US malaise which has reverberated throughout the world. India’s worst nightmares come true: Long term strategic malaise

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently published two graphics which struck people as odd by the stark juxtaposition: In 2003, GDP in the U.S accounted for 32 percent of the world total, while GDP of the emerging economies put together took up only 25 percent. In 2008, however, things just reversed with 25 percent for the U.S. and 32 percent going to the emerging economies. The two graphs show GDP as a percentage of total world output. However, what deserves notice is that the dramatic reversal could take place in just five years, and how much more will it change in the next five or the next ten years? the European Union and China,’ citing an article in Saturday’s New York Times Magazine titled ‘Waving Goodbye to Hegemony’ by Parag Khanna. By Li Hongmei People’s Daily Online

Ambassador Bhadrakumar has written profusely about the impact of the financial crisis and clearly sates that “Obama’s China policy renders obsolete the Indian strategic calculus built around the US containment strategy. Hardly two to three years ago, the Bush administration encouraged India to put faith in a quadrilateral alliance of Asian democracies – the US, Japan, Australia and India – that would strive to set the rules for China’s behavior in the region. ”

Charles Ferndale poignantly reminds America that Brack Obama’s father was not a slave in Kenya. Barack Obama was a free man. However Mr. Obama is a slave to the special interests he is beholden to. Mr. Obama paid homage to and kowtowed to the New York bankers, to Wall Street, to the Labor Union and to AIPAC–the biggest lobbies in Washington. However he did not know that the pantheon that he was praying to would lose their deity status and that the new financial God would be sitting in Beijing.

Betrayals & Blackmail in Bakiyev: Cloaking failure as success, hiding the defeat, declaring victory & withdrawing from Afghanistan within 12 months . The Chinese have their own opinions on solving the Afghan quagmire. Like Pakistanis the Chinese oppose the “military surge”, and want a “civilian surge”. Its position is consistent and mirrors the position of the Pakistani government which has been calling to accommodate the moderate Taliban and bring peace to the region with a massive influx of money which would improve the lives of the ordinary citizens. Fixing “AfPak” expedites the inevitable union between Pakistan and Afghanistan

China has grown to be a new heavyweight player and stepped into the limelight on the world stage. And its role in salvaging the plummeting world economy from hitting bottom looms large and active, as the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during her just wrapped-up Asian tour, ‘the U.S. appreciates the continued Chinese confidence in the U.S treasuries.’ If the Cold War was ‘a tug of war’ between East and West, and a showcase of hard power, what we have today, for the first time in history, is a global, multicivilizational and multipolar competition, and a display of smart power. To be the winner, one has to seek more cooperation rather than confrontation. By Li Hongmei People’s Daily Online

As a prediction of the sign of the times, we are witnessing a change in the basic laws of finance. Apparently the financial compass got shifted towards Beijing–at least till the tsunami of the present crisis blows over. There are signs that this may be a permanent shift. If so, New York cannot influence US policy to the extent it used to.

It is evident that the upshot of the shifting economic power signals a swift reduction of U.S. strength as a unipolar power. ‘At best, America’s unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but that was also a decade adrift…So now, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing—and losing—in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other superpowers: the European Union and China,’ citing an article in Saturday’s New York Times Magazine titled ‘Waving Goodbye to Hegemony’ by Parag Khanna. By Li Hongmei People’s Daily Online

US goes begging to Beijing: India feels the pain. Washington’s plans about Afghanistan got thrown out the window. These were in- the -face- orders that Hillary Clinton got from Bejing. China sets conditions for bailing out US and buying US T-Bills (http://rupeenews.com/2009/02/24/china-reads-the-riot-act-strict-conditions-for-bailing-out-us-and-buying-us-t-bills/.) Beijing wants the disputes in South Asia resolved, the region stabilized and an end to the war in the Hindu Kush.

Afghanistan: The writing is on the wall. Can Obama read it? . Even hawks like Ralph Peters are suggesting a change in policy–however they still don’t get it…..”Instead of increasing the U.S. military “footprint,” reduce our forces and those of NATO by two-thirds, maintaining a “mother ship” at Bagram Air Base and a few satellite bases from which special operations troops, aircraft and drones, and lean conventional forces would strike terrorists and support Afghan factions with whom we share common enemies. All resupply for our military could be done by air, if necessary.”

The result of the Beijing visit is having a long term impact on South Asia. India’s worst nightmares come true: Long term strategic malaise . Hillary Clinton is leading the charge in wooing the Chinese as a long term strategic partner. Why the US gave up India as a strategic partner.

The hard work of three generations of incorruptible nationalists has paid off in spades. Much to the chagrin of others today China confidently looks towards leading the world–remaking it in its image. What will the world look like in the next century. Unless dramatic events change the course of human history, the new world will be run by the Chinese and the Chinese Diaspora. it will be Socialistic-capitalistic and it will be Asian and Non-Western.

America’s foreign policy throughout the Middle East is what incubates terrorism, and that is not going to change. Afghans are starving by the hundreds of thousands, while 85 percent of the billions of dollars that flow into the region flow straight out again into Western bank accounts. Surely, Osama’s “advisors” would not want to kill off so sweet a cash cow. America has the money all right; but it is just not going to the people who need it most. America does not have the time? All the military men I hear say that NATO will be in Afghanistan, killing Afghans, for at least ten years to come. One would have to be a fool not to realise that the whole point of America’s policy is to keep Afghanistan in a state of war for decades; and is to destabilise Pakistan.
The writer has degrees from the Royal College of Art, Oxford University, and the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. He divides his time between the UK and Pakistan. Email: charlesferndale@yahoo.co.uk. Barack Obama’s lies, Wednesday, February 25, 2009, Charles Ferndale

Does Obama have the courage to implement the real solutions to Obama’s Vietnam (AfPak). Can Obama ignore the realities? Does he have any choice? 2009: Obama’s South Asian policy: A Marshall Plan for AfPak

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived. ~Abraham Lincoln In 1821 Solutions to “Obama’s Vietnam”