Foreword by Governor György H. Matolcsy “Asia’s emergence as the world’s geopolitical and economic center has lent global prestige to a new paradigm for achieving sustainable growth alongside social solidarity. With many other countries already studying the Asian playbook, the United States and Europe could benefit from doing the same.” (Parag Khanna, founder of FutureMap, best-selling author of Connectography and The Future is Asian, 2019)
Over the past one or two decades, a changing world order and the emergence of Asia have become a common argument of geopolitical analysts, economists, politicians and decision-makers around the world. Today, the facts clearly show that this is not only a popular idea, but a reality unfolding before our eyes. While Asia had a share of about 27% in global real GDP in 1990 and the Western half of the globe (Americas and Europe combined) accounted for 68%, these ratios have changed considerably since then. As early as five years ago, in 2015, Asia already reached a share of 45% within global output, and the share of Europe and the Americas fell to 50%. Ever since, the East has been on the rise, which also became obvious amid the pandemic in 2020 when China was one of the few economies to record positive growth on an annual basis. Bloomberg Economics estimates that by 2035, China will have overtaken the United States to become the world’s largest economy, but according to the UK-based Centre for Economics and Business Research and the Japanese Nomura Holdings, there is a good reason to believe that this date will arrive earlier, in 2028 or even in 2026. Furthermore, by the middle of the century, fast-growing emerging countries, located mostly in Asia, will produce almost 60% of global output, based on Bloomberg’s calculations.
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