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’DAVOS, Switzerland: China and India grabbed the
early spotlight at the World Economic Forum in Davos as delegates
debated, with both anticipation and concern, the growing economic
clout of the two Asian giants.
The titles of the seminars on
offer at the annual gathering of global movers and shakers hinted at
the feeling of suspicion and sense of threat which both nations
arouse in many Western politicians and business leaders.
“What kind of world does China
want?” “What’s on the minds of Asia’s new business
giants?” were among the topics up for discussion.
In her keynote speech opening the
four-day forum, German Chancellor Angela Merkel offered her
interpretation of the Forum’s theme—”The Shifting Power
Equation”—by highlighting the “enormous changes” underway in
China and India.
“One third of the world’s
population are no longer observers of what’s happening on the
world stage, but actually players,” she said. “What we have is a
completely new balance of power in the world today.”
But that view, shared by many in
Davos, was challenged by members of the large Indian and Chinese
delegations who made the trip to the exclusive Swiss ski resort.
“Power shifting is a very vague
concept,” Zhu Min, a vice-president at the Bank of China, told
Agence France-Presse.
According to Zhu, a lot of the
talk about the rise of Asia in general is founded on a basic
misunderstanding that manufacturing growth equates to economic
power.
“China has very strong
manufacturing growth. You see ‘Made in China’ everywhere, but I
don’t think a manufacturing capability can define a power
shift,” Zhu said.
“In the 1960s, we called it
‘power shifting’ when we thought Germany would take over. It
didn’t happen. In the 70s we thought Japan would take over. It
didn’t happen. Then in the 80s it was the Asian tigers. That
didn’t happen either,” Zhu said.
“It’s too early to talk about
a power shift,” he added, arguing that the Asian financial crisis
of the late 1990s had proved that real, sustainable economic power
comes from a strong financial market.
Michelle Guthrie, CEO of the Star
Group in Hong Kong, said she hoped that discussion at the forum
would push the idea of China and India’s emergence as an
opportunity, rather than a threat.
“This idea of a shifting power
equation doesn’t necessarily have to be seen in terms of winners
and losers,” Guthrie said.
“There is incredible energy and
innovation coming out of Asia, and it’s important to see these
countries as incredible markets to be developed,” she added.
For Indian industrialist Sunil
Mittal, one of the co-chairs of the 2007 Davos event, a Western
tendency to mistrust rather than embrace Asian strengths carries
enormous risk.
For Mittal, India’s greatest
asset is a global pool of talent with 620 million people of working
age, rising to nearly 850 million over the next decade.
“The world needs to adopt this
talent, to adopt this global pool because it’s responsible, it
comes out of a democratic field and from a very peaceful and diverse
nation,” he said.
Failure to do so, Mittal warned,
could result in a level of mass unemployment that “would not only
foment unrest at home, but also cause a world problem.”
--AFP
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