![]() ![]() Using charts to show that a "long peace" has prevailed since 1945, he believes we don't live in a dangerous world, and that the world's 88 per cent non-Western people, wanting Western living standards, will follow Europe's lead and reject the prospect of going to war to resolve their differences. Mahbubani doesn't subscribe to Western pessimism, and he barely mentions terrorism. He wants to stimulate a global conversation about this, develop a global ethic, and replace the anachronistic UN and its agencies with a democratic structure. Technology is rapidly interconnecting the world, and will create a sense of global compassion. World poverty will be eliminated by 2030, producing an "irreversible convergence" in quality of life for the majority. ![]() Free trade, he says, will deliver prosperity to the new global middle class, of whom half will be in Asia by 2020. Now, he is satisfied that Asia has triumphed and China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy in 2017. Mahbubani's earlier books, welcoming the rise of the "new Asia" and anticipating the decline of the West, were written in the midst of successive financial crises, and even then were full of optimism. Dissenters like Joseph Stiglitz​, Susan George, and Thomas Piketty​ do not appear. In The Great Convergence, Mahbubani drops lots of names of prominent people, members of a congenial club of (mainly) retired gentlemen who attend the same multilateral meetings, and hold similar ideas. The Great Convergence: Asia, The West and the Logic of One World. ![]()
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