"The Asian Age Coming"

"The Asian Age Coming" - that is one of today's posts from Sweden's former PM (and my former board colleague) Carl Bildt. It surely is. One of the most emotional discussions during last week's Frejas konferens (a Swedish world-and-Sweden-problem-solving conference I attended) concerned China's extraordinary economical growth. We were lucky to have the Swedish ambassador in Beijing with us at the conference.

The BusinessWeek graphics Carl is blogging about is interesting. I have a problem digesting two things in it, though: EU is supposedly going to continue downhill for the next fifty years, in comparison with the US. And India will pick up and basically catch up with China during the same time.

My gut feeling tells me that India will have a harder time than China. China has an industry far more superior than India's industry today, and China's mega-boom has been created partly from the fact that there was a need for a player like China in the global economy (low labor cost, low-productivity, large scale exports). India's scenario includes a China that still have a lot of labor that are very poor, but that increasingly gains economy of scale. (One should remember that the graph is produced by Keystone India, though...)

And when it comes to Europe's future, I sincerely believe that the new ten member states in EU25 will make Europe a more competitive player than the US. Long-term, that is.

PS.
I and Maja thought about the possibility to hiring a Chinese nanny for Max. Wouldn't it be great for him to become fluent in Mandarin?