Guanghui Zhao 
AMERICA AS NO.3: GET REAL ABOUT CHINA, INDIA AND THE REST [EPUB ebook] 
Get Real About China, India and the Rest

A Clash of Civilisations is not inevitable, yet danger mounts the longer the West ignores its top forecaster. In 2023, the OECD sees China’s economy as 27% bigger than the US: by mid-century 70%. India too will be larger, leaving America as No.3. Time to Get Real: listen to economists, especially development economists, and those in business who know China.

Three giant shocks lurk right ahead for the West: economic, demographic and competence. 90% of the world’s population will soon be non-Western: no more accepting exclusion from global decision making. After COVID, Afghanistan and domestic turmoil, many question Western competence to get things right, let alone avoid nuclear destruction.

Economic size, not military might, is what counts among Great Powers. As leading military historian Paul Kennedy wrote, military strength is, ‘inextricably intertwined with economic power and technological progress’. This need not threaten the West if understood and managed properly. Indeed, it would mitigate the real existential threats, from the environment to war. Otherwise nuclear conflict, Kissinger’s ‘Armageddon-like clash’, is ever more likely.

A New New World with growing muscle and some different ideas is emerging. How can the West best respond? The book proposes a Biden-Xi Grand Bargain, as Nixon struck with Mao. Grasp what Yin and Yang offer, as opposites can support each other for lasting mutual benefit.

Contents:

• Preface


• Prologue: The Last Chance


• Thesis:
  
  
  
  • Forecasts From the OECD and History
  
  
  • US Foreign Policy, China’s Economy and a Nixon–Mao Rerun
  
  
  • Great Shocks
  
  
  • The Power Equation and Decline of Empires
  
  


• Economic Contest:
  
  
  
  • Underestimating China and Ignored Reality
  
  
  • Sources of Dynamism
  
  
  • Strong Buttresses
  
  
  • China’s X-Factor
  
  


• Geopolitical Contest:
  
  
  
  • The New New World
  
  
  • The New China–US Equation
  
  
  • Challenges of Philosophy, Values and Psychology
  
  


• Competence: COVID:
  
  
  
  • This Didn’t Have to Happen
  
  
  • First Antidotes
  
  
  • How China Works
  
  


• Western Failings :
  
  
  
  • Politicians and Society
  
  
  • Media and COVID
  
  
  • Media Changes
  
  


• What Now?:
  
  
  
  • The Real China Threat
  
  
  • Old China Hand in the White House
  
  
  • What Can the West Learn From Itself and China?
  
  
  • Understanding In a New Era
  
  
  • Taking Stock
  
  
  • Conclusions
  
  


• Appendices


• GDP and PPP


• Tables of Economic and Population Sizes


• Acronyms


• Acknowledgements


• Index


• About the Author

Readership: General public interested in the social, political, economic and financial development of America, China , India as well as world affairs.

‘Drawing on his experiences living in Chinese cities and studying Chinese companies, Peyman describes China’s transition to modernity, which is being emulated, to varying extents, elsewhere among the Rest. For every warning that China will collapse under the weight of a rapidly aging population, overbearing authoritarianism, a massive debt overhang, and slowing growth, there is an example in Peyman’s book of China successfully leveraging scale, entrepreneurship, and innovation to advance its goals and interests.’ – Andrew Sheng (Distinguished Fellow, Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong) and Xiao Geng (Chairman, Hong Kong Institution of International Finance)

Key Features:

• America as No.3: Get Real About China, India and the Rest is very topical, original and fills a major gap in global knowledge


• A rare economic perspective in an argument dominated by the thinking of security experts, political scientists and international relations specialists who miss the most important point. Military spending, nukes and alliances are not the decisive numbers for the future


• Economic strength determines future military budgets, muscle and relations. The economy is the horse, weapons the cart. Experts from security, politics and international relations, who drive most Western political and media narratives on China, put the cart before the horse. They look backwards from the present to the past, not forwards to a much changing future


• America as No.3 fills a major gap in the market. Aimed at the general reader in easy to grasp language and logic it is unique. It may well be the first view in the West of the US-China conflict from a Chinese economic perspective, certainly by a China-based economist and investment strategist who has followed its development for two decades by living in Shanghai


• After some signs of a US-China thaw after the Bali G-20 meeting, America as No.3 is most timely, worldwide