The 20th century Nostradamus
WITH the advent of the modern era, people had long began conjecturing about the future, maintains Barry Minkin. Which way will the wind of change blow? This is the focus of the book in which business consultant, speaker and futurist Minkin has enlisted 100 trends that will most influence business and global economy beyond AD 2000. Through these trends, the writer has tried to posit implications and specific predictions which are designed to "weave together the trends that the successful person or Organisation should be aware of".
The writer comments, "In 2002, 'Greater China' - including the People's Republic, Hongkong, and Taiwan - is expected to have a net import of US $639 billion, compared to US $521 billion for Japan, with a projected GDP of US $9.8 trillion, compared to US $9.7 trillion for the US."
Minkin predicts that China will replace the US and Japan as the largest steel user and cause a global scramble for certain types of steel. And towards AD 2025, China will produce three times as much carbon dioxide as the US, and it will not sacrifice economic growth for the sake of its own or global environment.
The author also seeks to tell how liberal US immigration policies will transform the American society dramatically. The sun-belt states of California, Florida and Texas will become Third World states, with huge immigrant and black innercity populations which will be sharply divided from White America by poverty, violence, education and racial tension.
Minkin also predicts that Hispanics will surpass African Americans as the largest minority group in the US, although they will continue to have their ever increasing share of poverty. Asian Americans will dominate business and education on the West Coast and succeed as entrepreneurs more than anyone else.
Asia is visualised to become a region of megacities, with each tallying population of over eight million people (Mexico City records the world's largest population - 19.4 million) greatly influencing not just the long-term economic health of Asia, but of the world as a whole.
The book is well-researched. In the writer's opinion, "we need to withstand the thunder clash of global population shifts before we can discover the calm of the rainbow."