Where do you wanna be in 2020?

           I had never been as hopeful as I am today with the future of emerging countries. Perhaps History gets repeated as Mark Twain said or it’s just the sinusoidal cycle of economic prosperity each nation and parts of the world goes through times of history. Whatever can be the reasons, the world is changing, especially the economic landscape and the global geopolitics. I hesitate to comply with the linear projection with the data put forward by the World Bank and IMF that China will be the economic superpower by 2050 ( the adjusted forecast by Goldman Sachs is 2032) and India will also surpass US around the same time. Yet there is no choice but to trust the data as commonly said, “In God only we trust, everything else, we need data.” Well, on the other hand, we could probably debate about the date or the year when those nations will economically take over, what is not debatable is their unstoppable economic growth. With Chinese and Indian being the dominant global powerhouse, we can only speculate how that is going to look like.

           As Martin Jacques puts into his book, “When China Rules the World”, the world will be ruled again by the majority of people, unlike Britain or France or even United States did. The economic growth will sure create opportunities for better lives for billions of people in the region primarily in South and South East Asia. On the other hand, more multinationals will flock to the region to tap into the opportunities from burgeoning economic growth, and, most likely the next generations of multinationals will be evolved from China and India. Furthermore, as these nations empower themselves with economic clouts, they are also very likely to shape the financial and markets rules and policies. Perhaps, Marine Drive in Mumbai or the Corner Street in Shanghai will likely replace Wall Street. Hundreds and thousands of billionaires and millionaires will be minted from these regions. Especially since the Chinese economy is tilting towards being consumer-driven from export-based economy, it will need an unprecedented number of financial, business and engineering talents. This talent haunting will generate a massive wave of employment opportunities for many western educated students especially from the US and Europe.

          Hence, while nations around the world metamorphose from the worst recession since the Second World War with many countries in the western world losing their economic grounds to eastern economies, we perhaps should not be waiting until 2032 or 2050 to start thinking going East; it can happen as early as 2020 or earlier. We are probably better off learning Chinese and India cultures and languages. Most importantly Mandarin for sure as more than 50 % Indians speaks English already. When should not be surprised if we will have to queue at Indian or Chinese embassies for next generation of H-1B visas few years from now.

Sushil Khadka: skhadk@gmail.com