2023-10-01 21:35:10
The South is responsible for the growth: The Indian Ocean-Pacific region, which includes countries such as India, Indonesia, China and Australia, will remain the world’s growth driver. Infrastructure, digitalization, education and a growing middle class will ensure demand and progress. However, growth will shift south, to Southeast Asia, Bangladesh and India.
Christoph Hein
South Asia/Pacific business correspondent based in Singapore.
Fight for water: Thirty years ago, analysts warned that the next war would be fought over water in the Himalayas. China controls the flows that South Asia needs at their sources. Nobody can afford another war between today’s nuclear powers China and India. He is not excluded. Especially since the struggle for water will intensify in the face of heat and drought.
Competition for the Global South: Just 20 years ago, China refused to accept top positions in international organizations that were offered to it. Today, China and the Global South have created their own formats with development banks such as the AIIB, the BRICS Club or the Boao Forum. Fragmentation will accelerate. Just as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is increasingly condemned as “Western” or the World Trade Organization (WTO) is thwarted by the Americans, the Global South will come up with ever stronger organizations. The industrialized countries must adapt to a selective, changing ability to form alliances. Developing countries are becoming more selective when choosing their partners. Both sides are seeking votes from Africa, the Pacific region and Central Asia. This will make development processes more difficult and more expensive. Globalization has brought enormous increases in prosperity around the world and massively reduced poverty. However, the increase in prosperity has not yielded the hoped-for democratic dividend.
China is becoming more aggressive: Beijing’s aggressiveness will increase, both internally and externally. China is being shaken by a crisis of its own making. Hundreds of billions of dollars are on fire in the real estate sector, and many people’s retirement provisions are teetering. But as President Xi Jinping has cemented his power, turmoil is yet to be seen. However, globalization comes with a joke of history: the West helped make China strong. Its state-sponsored production now threatens jobs and social structures in industrialized countries. In order to slow down a shift to the right there, America and Europe are reaching deep into the protectionists’ toolbox. In China itself, ideology now trumps the rationally controlled planned economy. When the Australian government demanded an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, China hurt itself with years of restrictions on imports of coal, timber, wine and seafood.
Leading the way: China’s President Xi Jinping: Image: AFP
China is indeed tying up forces in its threatening gestures against neighboring countries. But the power clique in Beijing has learned from the misguided Russian attack on Ukraine. She knows that before an attack on Taiwan, the domestic economic crisis must first be dealt with, then the Yuan must be internationalized so as not to suffer too much from sanctions, and finally it must be further upgraded. But if the next American government stays on course, things will be very difficult for Beijing in five or ten years. Maintaining the status quo with threats that keep flaring up seems more likely than a war over Taiwan. However, two scenarios endanger this: a mistake or accident between the armed forces, which repeatedly almost touch each other off Taiwan, could trigger an attack. Or the crisis in China is escalating so dramatically that Xi believes the only way to achieve national agreement is through “attack as defense.”
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