Tag: Asia

Asia’s Autocrats Are Calling, Mr. Biden

Guest Post by Pat Buchanan

Asia's Autocrats Are Calling, Mr. Biden

While President Joe Biden was in Brussels and Warsaw showing U.S. solidarity with Ukraine, the 38-year-old autocrat who rules North Korea made a bold bid for the president’s attention.

For the first time since 2017, Kim Jong Un test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-17, the largest road-mobile missile ever launched.

While it flew 600 miles from Pyongyang into the Sea of Japan, the mammoth missile flew for 71 minutes, reaching an altitude of 3,852 miles.

Had it been fired in a normal trajectory, its missile warheads could have reached Washington, D.C., and every city in the USA.

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Sidestepping the Military Leviathan: Make Money, Not War

Guest Post by

Mock-up of planned Russian-Chinese airliner to compete with Boeing and Airbus. To enter service by 2025. Ambitious? Oh yes. Remember when we laughed at Toyota, Airbus, and Trump?

Is Washington really going to start a trade war with China, or is it just huffing and puffing for position? I don’t know. Mr. Trump has inexplicably failed to brief me. A point worth bearing in mind:

The United States cannot compete commercially with a developed Asia, or China.

America has nowhere to go. It is a fully developed economy that cannot grow rapidly if it grows at all. America is also a country of only medium size with a white and Asian population of a bit more than two hundred million who do all the brain work. It has a decaying system of education, declining living standards, and an economy crippled by huge military expenditures.

By contrast China has a billion Han Chinese, intelligent government, a great deal of room to grow and high rates of doing so. The combined land mass, population, and economic potential of Asia are staggering. In differing degrees, Asian nations are growing.

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These 3 Animated Charts Capture the Economic Rise of Asia

The economic rise of Asia has been swift, but it has also been a little reckless at times.

China’s rapid spending and investment has come at a price. The country is now saddled with a massive debt bomb that could detonate at any moment. Further, economic interests have helped to create a precarious situation in the South China Sea, which many experts see as having escalating potential for armed conflict. Such actions would disrupt trade along one of the most important sea routes in the world.

To be fair, no one ever said that executing on five-year plans would be easy.

The Economic Rise of Asia

Despite the possible economic landmines that could be waiting for China, it is still impressive how fast this all happened.

China now has the second-largest economy by a wide margin, but before the 1990s the country did not even crack the top 10.

The following three animated charts from data visualization whiz-kid Aron Strandberg help to tell the story of the rise of China – and how India is projected to follow in those same footsteps.

Top 10 Economies by Real GDP

By the year 2030, it is projected that China and India will both be in the top three economies by real GDP. Even with growth continuing to stagnate, Japan remains in fourth place.

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