Photo: iStock
Norbert Csizmadia
16/10/2023 10:34
The pole of the world economy is shifting eastwards again, and while the 19th century was the era of the British Empire and the 20th century that of the United States, the 21st century will clearly be the century of Asia. China will play a leading role in the rise of Asia and Eurasia. The Central and Eastern European region, hitherto called the buffer zone, has been transformed from a former periphery to the gateway to the Eurasian continent.
The 21st century is also the century of knowledge and creativity, where individual ideas and innovations are the most important currency, and countries that do not have enough knowledge are forced to buy it.
Alongside geopolitical processes, geoeconomic processes are also emerging and becoming more powerful, where the race is now for markets rather than the acquisition of territory. In the age of geoeconomics, states use market instruments to increase their own power, i.e. the economy is seen as an instrument of great power politics. Military strikes can be replaced by economic sanctions, while military alliances are replaced by competing trade regimes.
China launched the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, one of the largest and most significant investments in human history. China's long-term plan is to reclaim Eurasia's former historical, cultural, economic and commercial importance by building the new Silk Road and shifting the focus of development axes and routes from the oceans to the mainland.
The future is long-term and sustainable, and the winners will be countries that are connected, that seek balance, that have their own long-term vision, where monetary policy, geopolitics and economic policy and related national strategy are implemented together.
In this ever-changing world, we need new approaches, a long-term vision, new sustainable economics, new functional geography, new sustainable technologies, new models to navigate the complex geopolitical waves of our time.
The author is a geographer and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Pallas Athene Domus Meriti Foundation and the John von Neumann University Foundation