Metcalf's law taken to a new level.

Today it seems that everything is made in China. When I was a child it seemed that everything was made in Taiwan, and the generation before me certainly can recall when it seemed that everything was made in Japan.

So, I would argue that China's economic rise is simply an inevitable cycle. I would also make the case that China and the U.S. are not direct economic competitors but rather complementary economies. U.S. economic power comes from the modularity and flexibility of its workforce that can add high end value, while China's comes from cheap labor, land and transportation for commodity-like products. In fact, one might even argue that the U.S. is more powerful because of the fact that other countries are mass producing products, thereby allowing the U.S. workforce to focus on higher end activities.

Brave new connections

Jan 28th 2009
From Economist.com

Will America's network power trump the Asian century?

EVERY few years a piece of writing comes along that throws the global intelligensia into a tizzy. The rise and fall of great powers gives way to the end of history, which must make room for a clash of civilisations. Tipping points and black swans abound. These days, the grandest notion making the rounds is Asia’s unstoppable rise coupled to America’s inevitable decline.

Into the mix comes a short, deceptively simple essay by Anne-Marie Slaughter (pictured), who recently stepped down as dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs to head the State Department's Office of Policy Planning. Ms Slaughter writes that power in the 21st century depends not so much on arms or wealth but on network connections. By this she means not just internet links, but physical ones such as immigrants have with their original countries, businesses with their trading partners, aid groups with the communities they serve and the like. Here, she believes, America has an extraordinary advantage.

More: http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/asiaview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13010794&fsrc=nwl