Rating: 
Summary: Trying a bit hard to be all things to all people
Review: A book this reader was looking forward to with anticipation, 20:21 vision turned out to be a bit of nothingness. The author doesn't really have much that is new to say rather it reads like a cobbling together of current economic and international relations points that you have probably contemplated yourself if you are at all interested in the field. For a complete layman, there are probably some interesting insights, and if you have been paying attention there are perhaps a few facts you haven't come across before. Yet ultimately, this book disappoints, especially considering that the author is also the editor of the excellent Economist. If anything, it might lead you to search out some more focused or specialized reading in the topic areas.
Rating: 
Summary: Corrections
Review: Actually, according to the World Trade Organization, China is now the world's fourth largest trade partner after the US, Germany and Japan - many times bigger than Holland. China is also on track to surpass Japan in total international trade volume within the next couple of years - maybe as early as next year. As for GDP in PPP, the CIA World Factbook places China in second place after the US at $6.5 trillion. The same publication places Thailand at #20, worth under $480 billion. There can be no doubt about China's growing economic clout. Bill Emmott's statistics were out of date the day the book was published; some of them were wrong even then.
Rating:
Summary: Please be specific
Review: Almost half the book is a debate on the pros and cons of free market capitalism. As a globetrotting businessman and investor with visiting appointments at a major business school, I would have thought that we are way past that kind of philosophical self-beating. What else works? I would paraphrase Winston Churchill's saying about constitutional democracy to describe capitalism as well: "It's the worst system imaginable - until you look at all other alternatives."Instead I suggest Bill Emmott, whose magazine I read occasionally, to spend more time on each of the major countries and issues of the twenty-first century. In particular I was surprised there isn't a separate chapter on the UK, which after all was still an important country at the beginning of the twenty-first century. (There are separate chapters on the Great Powers: US, China, Europe and Japan - and appropriately enough none on Russia and India.) Perhaps Bill Emmott recognizes that Britain is not going to matter much in this century? If so, he is in good company. The 20th century opened with Britain at the top of the league - ahead of America in overall military strength. Then Britain lost its empire after the ravages of two world wars. Now Britain is in very rapid RELATIVE decline less because its economy is stalled than because the rest of the world is catching up fast. Militarily Britain still counts somewhat, given its nuclear weapons and a fine navy. Economically it is a different story. Britain is now in 6th place in world trade (in terms of both exports and imports), compared with its FIRST place in 1900. Also, Britain today is in 7th place in gross domestic product. Its output, 17% of the world's total in 1900, is now only 3.2%.......exactly a quarter of China's 12.8%. Worse, it continues to slip on both counts, with no hope of slowing down, let alone reversing course. Politically it is slowly being shut out of Europe by France and Germany. Britain's only hope to remain relevant is to maintain America's goodwill. But how long this can last is anyone's guesses. And domestically even its internal unity cannot be taken for granted. Personally I don't see how the UK can survive in its present political form for the remainder of the 21st century. Alas, Britain in the 21st century is undoubtedly looking like a basket case in the making. Let Bill Emmott write a good, dispassionate chapter about his own country. He can do that, I'm sure. I like Bill Emmott's "paranoid optimism." I think he means "guarded optimism" about America's prospects. The one thing he must have overlooked is the perception gap of America - between how the world views America and how Americans believe their country is being viewed (as opposed to how Americans view themselves, which of course is not an issue). American power will last quite a while - thank goodness - but what about America's popularity in the rest of the world? The Harvard don Joseph Nye is right: being rich and powerful is not enough to LEAD - only to impose your will, and even then only with great difficulty. To have FOLLOWERS you've got to make them like and admire you too. After WW2 we did a great job both ways. Now I'm not so sure. (If we just turn bully, who are we to pass judgment on Stalin?) I also have an idea about how this book's plan may be improved. This ought to be a user-friendly handbook, with short, to-the-point chapters dedicated to very specific topics: countries, geographical areas, zones, and then issues, such as terrorism, oil, the environment, human rights, global trade, etc. etc. There should be lots of maps, both political and thematic, and charts, graphs, and tables.......exactly the same features which make the Economist so readable. Right now, this book as it stands is already pretty short, but it's poorly organized so that you feel you can't pick up anything if you just skim it on the plane (for example). You have to read it from cover to cover, and that's not user-friendly. (The book can actually be much longer and still grabs the reader if organized properly.)
Rating:
Summary: FDI
Review: Bill Emmott insists that FDI into the US exceeds that into China. Here are the numbers for 2003, from the OECD, as reported by the BBC yesterday: China: $53 billion
US: $40 billion
UK: $14.6 billion
Germany: $12 billion
India: $4 billion
Russia: $1 billion What else can he say now, that FDI doesn't matter? Bill Emmott's persistent inability to get the figures right and his stubborn refusal to face facts and trends undermine his credibility.
Rating:
Summary: FDI
Review: Bill Emmott insists that FDI into the US exceeds that into China. Here are the numbers for 2003, from the OECD, as reported by the BBC yesterday: China: $53 billion
US: $40 billion
UK: $14.6 billion
Germany: $12 billion
India: $4 billion
Russia: $1 billion What else can he say now, that FDI doesn't matter? Bill Emmott's persistent inability to get the figures right and his stubborn refusal to face facts and trends undermine his credibility.
Rating:
Summary: Chinese statistics "dubious"?
Review: I don't believe Chinese official statistics are as unreliable as Bill Emmott thinks. For a technical analysis of China's economic data, the first place to look would be "China's Economic Transformation" (2002) by the Princeton econometrist Gregory Chow, one of the world's foremost authorities on China's economy. Basically, even if the GDP figures are overstated, so long as they are consistently overstated by the same methods year after year, the actual GDP growth rates can be worked out quite easily and reliably. Another reason for believing the official numbers would be that some of these can be double-checked by foreign governments and international organizations. Trade figures are reciprocal, for example, and the WTO also keep a fairly good track of their member states' trade figures. China cannot claim to do x amount of trade with the US if the US Dept of Commerce's own figures with China deviate from x by a large margin. As far as I know, they generally do match.
Indeed, some analysts suspect that the official Chinese statistics actually understate the reality, as least as far as GDP figures are concerned. The Rand and Harvard anaylst William Overholt for example believes this to be the case. "Whereas the former Soviet Union's economy was vastly overstated by its government, China's GNP is greatly understated by official statistics." ("The Rise of China," 1993, pp. 29, 51) I think that in the past, before the reforms inaugurated in 1979, Chinese official data were rather unreliable. During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s, official numbers were pretty much worthless as local authorities tried to overmatch pre-set goals. In today's China, by contrast, official figures must be accurate because foreign governments and companies rely on them to a significant extent for investment purposes. China's leaders can't afford a credibility problem any more. As they continue to liberalize and marketize their economy, the more transparent the data-gathering processes, and the more believable the figures, become.
If Overholt is right, Bill Emmott's fears would have been unjustified as late as a decade ago. Now, they are completely unrealistic.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent analysis of 20th Century and where we are going
Review: I don't know what book these reviewers were reading! Bill Emmott, Editor of The Economist, is in a position to know in great detail the political and economic state of the world. He describes in the book the ascent of democracy and capitalism around the world, along with massive growth of GDP per capita of the planet, during the 20th Century. He also recognizes the potential of backslides of both democracy and capitalism, especially given the cyclical nature of the free market system, and how recession or depression can lead to closing markets and authoritarianism. Yet he points out how we should be "paranoid optimists" about the future, as the rate of democratic and free-market change has been accelerating, especially in the last decade of the 20th Century. Emmott also gives an excellent description of how US government policy turned a stock market bubble burst into the Great Depression through raising interest rates and killing global trade with high tarriffs. Which is timely, as we are in the same situation now, but doing the opposite thing (lowering Fed interest rates, encouraging global trade) than we did in the 30's, and it seems to be working.
Rating: 
Summary: On China
Review: I think Bill Emmott has many interesting things to say in this book. But on China he is off base. He seems to think China irrelevant. The facts do not support such a view, however. Let me compare China with the country that is her near rival in international influence as the 21st century opened. The following numbers speak for themselves. Statistics for the UK are in brackets for comparison.
China's nominal GDP: $ 1.560 trillion (UK - $ 1.794 trillion)
China's nominal GDP with Hong Kong included: $ 1.730 trillion
China's GDP in purchasing power parity: $ 6.449 trillion (UK - $ 1.664 trillion)
China's GDP growth rate: 8.5% (UK - 2.1%)
China's 2003 total international trade: $950 billion (UK - $934 billion)
China's FDI: $53 billion (UK - $ 15 billion)
China's industrial production growth rate: 30.4% (UK - minus 0.7%)
China's electricity production: 1,575 billion kWh (UK - 361 billion kWh)
China's steel production: 220 million metric tons (UK - 13 MMT)
China's proven oil reserves: 18 billion bbl (UK - 4.7 billion bbl)
China's coal reserves: 126 billion short tons (UK - 1.65 billion short tons)
China's proven natural gas reserves: 53 trillion cubic feet (UK - 22 trillion cubic feet)
China's main phone lines: 263 million (UK - 35 million)
China's cell phones: 269 million (UK - 50 million)
China's internet users: 80 million (UK - 25 million)
China's military expenditures in nominal dolllars: $60 billion (UK - $43 billion)
China's manpower fit for military service: 208 million (UK - 12.4 million)
China's nuclear warheads: 470 (UK - <200)
China's ICBM's: 120 (UK - 0)
China's SLBM's: 12 (UK - 64)
China's strategic bombers: 130 (UK - 0)
China's total nuclear weapons' yield: 530 megatons (UK - 19 MT)
China's manned space program: active (UK - none)
China's median age: 31.8 years (UK - 38.7 years)
China's territory: 9.6 million sq km (UK - 245,000 sq km)
China's population: 1.3 billion (UK - 60 million)
China's coastline: 14,500 km (UK - 12,429 km)
China's Olympic gold medals in Athens 2004: 32 (UK - 9)
China's history as a unified state: about 2000 years (UK - about 300 years)
Overall, China compares very favorably with the UK, even though China has only just begun to adopt market economics. Already China is giant. She will be even bigger in the 21st century. Careful research, reliable statistics, rhetorical restraint, foresight - these are in short supply in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Chinese statistics "dubious"?
Review: In fact, since the late 1990's it was becoming clear to Western observers that the Chinese government has been understating its GDP. China's economic growth is now known to be higher than its official statistics claim. Anyone so out of touch with the latest developments shouldn't be the editor of the Economist.
Rating:
Summary: Invidious comparison
Review: Nobody compared China to the United States...until Bill Emmott himself became the first one to make this suggestion. That China is not yet even remotely comparable to the US is obvious to everyone. What is not so obvious is why Bill Emmott calls China "a modest country at best." If comparisons are warranted, then perhaps China, the fastest rising power, should be contrasted with Britain and Russia, the fast declining ones - weak countries without a trace of modesty.
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