From The Independent, via A Glimpse of the World:
China, China, China. The country’s prospects, its relations with the rest of the world and its impact on the world economy run through proceedings here at the World Economic Forum like a stick of Brighton rock. Just a little noticed footnote at these meetings of business and political leaders four or five years ago, it is now all pervasive. Everyone’s talking about it, no one can ignore it, and like it or not, from China’s impact on finite world resources to climate change and the laws of supply and demand, it is transforming the way we live with a speed barely imaginable just a few years ago.
There are a myriad different perceptions of the phenomenon being aired by participants at Davos, the Swiss alpine resort which hosts the WEF annual meeting each year, far too many to rehearse at length here. Yet perhaps one of the most striking comes from Larry Summers, a former US Treasury secretary and now president of Harvard University. He describes the integration of this vast new pool of cheap labour into the world economy as one of the three great economic events of the last millennium – on a par with the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution.
