Arun, I don't buy the assumption: <It will be very difficult for China to stay the leader when it gets there.>
China has numbers, but as Bangladesh, Nigeria, Luxembourg, Hong Kong and Switzerland show, there is much more to wealth per capita than numbers.
China has only 4 x as many people as the USA, so even in absolute terms, it's not vastly ahead.
When one considers that the USA has got people like me as part of the system, the USA numbers should be boosted and would be more like China's.
To get ahead, China will have to do a lot more than working for less money. There needs to be a long-term competitive advantage. Those advantages have to be sufficient to overcome the long-term competitive disadvantages.
I don't think China has a chance. The glory days of conquest and Genghis Khan as a means to wealth have long-gone. The world isn't a place of found-wealth. It's a place of created and voluntarily traded wealth.
It's already 8 years since I was in Bangalore, so I suppose quite a bit has changed, but I'd be surprised if it isn't much the same. It is very very far from a first world place. So it's one person short of "everyone thinks of Bangalore as being this First World kind of place" [you makes two].
The USA has intrinsic advantages, and with the added control of cyberspace which they enjoy, I think they have got a choke hold on the rest of the world to go along with the other advantages. The advantages I'm thinking of are social rather than things like giant oil fields, and other resources.
I don't see why the USA couldn't use Domain Name Servers as tax collectors. Building a competing network would be quite a project.
Mqurice |
