"World order post COVID-19" Topic

Experts share opinions on a post COVID world.

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Personally I think this is the west's last splutter, a continuation of a decline that began in 1914. The future already belonged to China and Asia as a whole. COVID is just making it happen sooner.

Let's hope not. I'd hate to see a globe led by the Chinese communists. They are not the friends of freedom and liberty.

I think those experts are unduly negative and some opinions are a little far fetched. I don't see why it was the US responsibility to organise a world response; the bloated ( and obsequious to China) WHO is designed for that.

World order may change to a degree economically, and maybe socially, but personally I disagree with these experts.

decline that began in 1914.

A lot of advances occurred in the West since 1914. Improvements in science and technology. Many inventions, cures for diseases, civil rights, improved quality of life. There is a reason that China's wealthy have been buying property in the West for many years now. Life is pretty good in the West.

It would be a grim world indeed. What advances has communism brought other than the T-34 and the AK-47?

But what if its all over hyped?

I agree with pzIVh43.

A Wall Street house is predicting 2,000,000 unemployed, soon. My guess is at least 25 times that, and shutdowns are going to be for months, if not the rest of the year, not two weeks.

In two months more than half of Californians will have been exposed to, or actually have the virus.

Don't get me wrong, people dying is bad, but it is inevitable.

I find it interesting that the media is completely ignoring the 800,000 – 1,000,000 needlessly dying in the USA every year, for years and decades, while freaking out over a few hundred deaths here in the first three months of the year. 200,000 – 250,000 preventable deaths have already occurred in the same time span, but the national media won't mention that. The hypocrisy is truly astounding.

I think the virus is over-hyped, but not the economic fallout from the over-reaction to shutting down the US economy. The latter is going to be far more disruptive AND devastating to many more people in America, and beyond.

But playing the what if game in two months there are less deaths than the yearly flu season, and yes many businesses will be destroyed as how many small businesses can take a two month loss and no gain?
Then where will we be?
The predictions of a hockey stick graphic rarely pan out in reality.

A numbers perspective:
"Cancer is among the leading causes of death worldwide. In 2012, there were 14.1 million new cases and 8.2 million cancer-related deaths worldwide.

The number of new cancer cases per year is expected to rise to 23.6 million by 2030."

I guess if you really believe thses "experts", you had better start learning to speak Mandarin.

BB

If you read each one, it's pretty balanced despite a few pro-China gush opinions like this one from Stephen M. Walt:

COVID-19 will also accelerate the shift in power and influence from West to East. South Korea and Singapore have responded best, and China has reacted well after its early mistakes.

It didn't make "early mistakes" – China flat out suppressed information about the outbreak, even going so far as to arrest and abuse doctors and others who tried to warn the public. I say abuse, it should be killed since one was apparently beaten to death while in custody. Then China lied to the world about the nature and spread of the disease. Took ZERO action to stop the spread, allowing tens of thousands of people to travel directly from Wuhan to Italy. Yes, Italy's participation in Belt and Road has been fatal to many elderly Italians. China also makes clumsy overt threats about cutting off medicine and other key goods as a way to bully countries into silence.

I think this rather speaks to the incompetence of the CCP, and many countries and companies are totally rethinking their reliance on a fragile Just in Time supply chain with China, which can only slow down their economy and reduce their global power.

I see a major manufacturing shift *out* of China as a result. That seems to be a common view of several of the authors.

SBMinisguy; a huge chunk of the world's largest companies are Chinese!

forbes.com/global2000

Much like the other north Asians like Japan and South Korea, China used western investment to build up its own corporate power. A lot are controlled or even outright owned by the PRC.

Stupid westerners just viewed Asians as cheap labour. The Asians played the part knowing that the greedy westerners were slitting their own throats giving away technology and know how and access to their own markets.

I remember reading at university how the CIA had concludes western companies had stopped working for western interests by the 1970s. Indeed western politics was often subverted to pursue corporate interests instead of national good.

Asian governments maintain huge control and linkages with their corporations to ensure they act in the national interest.

Let's hope not. I'd hate to see a globe led by the Chinese communists. They are not the friends of freedom and liberty.

Let's not go overboard with the Sinophobia. Just because the vast majority of Chinese willingly signed away their liberties and freedom to the State (CPC) in a social contract in exchange for economic prosperity and security doesn't mean China's going to spread Marxist socialism/communism worldwide like in the good old days of the Cold War.

China should be taken very seriously as they are significantly smarter overall than the Russians who, at their best, were (and to a great deal still are) a third world nation with nukes.

That said, China has very real problems with both public and private debt as well as balancing a substantial rising middle class resenting central control with an existing power structure terrified of losing control.

There is nothing wrong with finding a way to co-exist while waiting for their own massive internal contradictions to change their governance as happened with the Soviet Union. Respect what they are and don't ever think any nation doesn't operate only out of self-interest but I'd hardly recommend conceding the rest of the century to China.

There is nothing wrong with finding a way to co-exist while waiting for their own massive internal contradictions to change their governance as happened with the Soviet Union.

Except for the fact that under Putin, Russia is not exactly a democracy either, even if it isn't the monolithic superpower it was up until 1989. Some might even say the democratic experiment in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union ultimately failed.

McKinistry, most western countries are the same when it comes to debt. In fact current global debt to GDP is 300+%.

In Australia private debt to income ratio is 204%.

Neoliberal policies means dismantling a lot of banking regulation. End result is debt blow outs

Neoliberal policies means dismantling a lot of banking regulation.

Neoliberals and Neocons are both guilty of the globalist economic policies responsible for our current economic mutually assured destructive hostage relationship. I'm sure you're well aware of this being from Australia.

Fanatic, in Australia both sides of the political spectrum. embraced neoliberalism and globalism. Indeed the most successful neolibs on the country were the nominally centre left Labor party under Bob Hawke and then Paul Keating. They also smashed trade unions who they were meant to represent.

Keatong himself said he wanted to liberate Australians from production lines.

And succeed he did – Australia rapidly deindustrialised to the point that the economy has lost most diversification and relies mainly on mining for foreign income which is dimilar to most third world countries.

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And we sold out to the Chinese in a major way – Australia's economy is dead without China.

Now some of the advice been given to Australia in terms of development is to pursue similar tactics to the third world ala Cuba or Mali or Iran or Bamgladesh:

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To question neoliberalism or globalisatio
in Australia would get you labelled a racist. Even the Greens here support neoliberalism and globalisation.

To put it simply COVID would not have been as much of an issue back in 1980 as it is in 2020.

arealdeadone, well put. If we see any changes resulting from COVID-19, I would hope it is to scale back if not outright phase out economic globalization, with an eye towards reindustrializing the West.