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Moving toward multipolar world

By Yu Zhongwen (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-12 14:32

The suggestion that global power is now shifting from the West to the East is at best a half-truth and therefore misleading.

The power-shift theory is basically drawn from a judgment that the next few years will see a dramatic acceleration in the shift of global economic powers eastward. But it ignores the very fact that a majority of nations in the East are largely developing and poor.

The theory has gained more ground of late as major developing countries such as China and India have been doing well in warding off the impact of the global financial crisis while most rich nations suffered from a severe economic downturn.

With a combined population of some 2.4 billion at present, China and India, the two vast countries of the East, will reclaim their positions as economic giants in this century, some Western media outlets have proclaimed.

This power-shift theory may, however, have ignored an obvious fact that the two Asian countries are only developing nations, with their per capita GDP lagging developed countries despite rapid economic strides made over the past decades thanks to their economic reform and opening-up policies.

The World Bank put China and India's per capita GDP in 2009 at $3,687 and $1,122 respectively, ranking 103 and 140 worldwide, whereas the per capita GDP of the United States amounted to $46,436 in the year.

Therefore, the significance of China's and India's soaring GDP should not be exaggerated, considering the real scenario where a large proportion of the populace in both nations is leading a relatively poor life, not to mention the huge gaps between the East and the West in technological know-how, military capability and political influence in international affairs.

It is true that global power has experienced some changes in recent years thanks to economic globalization and multipolarization.

More and more countries and regions, or international bodies, such as the European Union, BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), and the Group of 20, have played greater political or economic roles on the world stage after the end of the Cold War, during which the world was dominated by two superpowers - the United States and the Soviet Union.

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said recently that the world is witnessing a trend where various international forces are moving toward a relatively balanced state, an inevitable outcome of multipolarization, economic globalization, and rapid scientific and technological revolution.

The path to a multipolar world not only involves the rapid development of newly emerging major developing countries, but also the strengthening of many developing countries as regional powers, Yang said.

This has occurred not only in Asia, but also in Africa and Latin America, Yang added.

In fact, multipolarization has become the most significant trend of the modern world. Developing countries as a whole, not just those in the East, have been gradually rising on the world stage and should have more say in international affairs.

It's better to say that Western domination of the world is being diluted by a multipolar world, in which developing countries should have equal rights to development.

Meanwhile, an outstanding problem at present is that the reasonable rights and legitimate demands of developing countries have not received due respect and attention.

It's much better for some Western theorists to recognize the trend of multipolarity and to help developing countries win equal say and rights to development, instead of sounding a false alarm on the rise of certain major developing countries.

The author is a writer with the Xinhua News Agency.

(China Daily 08/12/2010 page8)