Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | M | Montana Business Quarterly

Rising Asia and Montana: becoming closer neighbors.

Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In the context of world history the idea of a powerful and rising Asia is not new. A thousand years ago the emerging countries of today, including much of Asia, were more powerful economically than the countries that we define today as developed. Seventy years before Columbus' discovery of America, the Chinese navy was building ships that were four times larger than the Santa Maria. In 1800, the second largest city in the world was London with a population of 861,000. The largest city then was Beijing with 1,100,000 and the third largest was Guangzhou (Canton) with 800,000. Philadelphia at that time, America's largest city, had a population of 40,000.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Economics and Political Order

Among the four largest economies in the world by 2040 three are projected to be in Asia--China, Japan, and India--with the possibility, barring major catastrophes, that the economy of China will by then be larger than that of the United States. Per capita GDP of course is another matter. Our understanding of the Chinese economy can begin with the Chinese concept of government and political order, zhi, as understood in Chinese philosophy and history. Notice how one of the components for character zhi, to...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!