Future world powers

[Rugi]

I've always liked discussing the idea of who is going to culturally and economically rule the world as well as what countries in the future will have high qualities of life and be good places to live plus with the talks of how China will economically surpass the U.S it could only be a matter of time until the balances of power in different factors will be tossed across the world. Feel free to use this thread to discuss the future of countries if the mods so permit.

My personal opinions regarding China:

I am certain that China will become the economic world power of the future (if they aren't already) but I'm not sure how well they will do in other factors. As China develops its more poverty-stricken areas and more and more people get an education I think its pretty likely that they will become a scientific world power. Where I think they will really fall behind is culture and soft power. Heavy censorship within mainland China means that foreign ideas tend to not get in as easily as they do in other places and not many people who aren't Chinese will consume a whole lot of Chinese media or use Chinese online services.

Linguistically they are also somewhat screwed. Mandarin's inherent tonality makes it a pain in the ass to learn for anybody doesn't speak a language with tones and its unique and frankly kind of off the wall writing system means that I doubt it will become a Lingua Franca outside of China anytime soon. As someone who lives in a region where schools tend to offer teaching in at least one Asian language Japanese is still the most popular by far. (Though I've also heard of schools that teach Korean, Indonesian and Vietnamese)

Nothing demonstrates China's underappreciated culture better than the fact that minuscule Hong Kong has probably made more movies popular abroad and in the western world is pretty much as well known as China.

I'm also interested in what will become of the other BRIC nations in the future but China is really the only one I've researched in any depth.

Who do you think will be the next world powers? Will any language every come to usurp English in popularity? Who will economically, socially, scientifically and culturally rule the world?

 

[Kink]

No language will ever usurp English, it is the standardized universal language of the world and its popularity is only increasing.

 

[Vinc2612]

I think its pretty likely that they will become a scientific world power.

Linguistically they are also somewhat screwed. Mandarin's inherent tonality makes it a pain in the ass to learn for anybody doesn't speak a language with tones and its unique and frankly kind of off the wall writing system means that I doubt it will become a Lingua Franca outside of China anytime soon.

Actually, what you call as "being screwed linguistically" is a force in their scientific progress. As a French who worked in a lab, I published my work in English. I have several friends working in Germany, and they publish in English. Actually, the whole western world publishes in English.
At the same time, there are many scientific researches that were made in China, and published in Chinese. Which means that someone who speaks both Chinese and English has access to (almost) the totality of the publications in the world. Someone who doesn't speak Chinese has only access to half of them (well, maybe not half, but you got my point). Guess who can progress faster?

 

[Cresselia~~]

I'd say China's current economy is basically a bubble. Not to mention how they have a horrible government.
The richest Chinese people are all becoming immigrants to USA via elitist naturalization, and they bring their money with them. And that's a lot of money.
China rose to the riches not because of superior technology, but because they earned it in a dirty way.

If talking about super world powers, I'd place my bet on South Korea, Japan and Singapore. Japan is actually very advanced, both in how the general public discipline themselves, and also their education, their technology is simply superior. Living in Japan is way better than living in say, USA or Europe.
Korean technology is also amazing, and the quality of the general public is improving.

However, regardless to what country becomes the next superpower, I think English will still be keeping its status.

 

[Taistelu]

I actually think its almost impossible to predict what the world superpower will be in say, 100 years time. So many countries have issues that can cause serious damage to them and simply, we don't know what will happen. The set of circumstances could be entirely different in 100 years time.

English not being the most used language seems impossible. How does that even begin to happen?

 

[Pyritie]

This thread reminded me of this video:

Look how quickly things change!

 

[The Quasar]

My little cent. I think we should forget "money" and stop who is increasing own wealth, on the back of the environment and food safety.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2...-wealth-in-hands-population-inequality-report

Otherwise I think will be not a future.

 

[Taistelu]

There are so many things that would lead to us not being around and having a future (think 200-300 years time) that its almost impossible to count.

 

[Cresselia~~]

This thread reminded me of this video:

Look how quickly things change!

This is so amazing! Thanks for sharing.
Although Asians are frequently taught in history lessons that Europeans are superior compared to Asians, (this is STILL being taught nowadays!!) this video shows that Asian history started early, and actually were quite capable.
It shows that people from nearly all continents are capable of something, and it's just a matter of environmental circumstances/ luck that determines which empires get the most land mass.
Often, very minor changes in technology or their war strategy can make them invade effectively.

I often see Youtube comments from black people saying that they are sure that Africa will rule again.
Whilst most people find it Afrocentric, it is actually true. It's not because they are superior, but different continents tend to rule from time to time.
It's just a matter of time.
Any race can rule again.

 

[The Quasar]

Dudes, what do you think about national sovereignty? Are you sure it still exists?
Or are we witnessing to a programme aimed at creating a supra-national economic global power?

 

[Grey Knight]

People really believe that China poses a threat to usa in a militaristic and geopolitic way, thing is that US and China are the most interconnected economies to ever exist, China not only provides cheap staff to US but also helps US on establishing the US Dollar as the worlds deposit currency.

If O$l providers like saudi Arabia and big guys like china ever lose trust on dollar and pick some other currency to trade with, usa will lose the ability to just print money leading to a chokepoint on its economy and as a result the end of the world as we know it, chances are that the only economies that will survive will be third world countries and maybe communist nations like N.Korea and Cuba, but maybe not, i mean even those guys rely on O$l prices and trad$ng, so yeah who knows, maybe Kingdom of Kongo is a future superpower.

then again the chance that this happens is not that big, i mean US GDP to dept ratio is acceptable on around 100%, acceptable among other advanced nations at least, i guess we dont have but to wait and see what happens on countries in a much worse shape like Italy (130%),its very funny how many people worry about this happpening too, just go ahead and write
"china is getting rid of.." on a search engine and autofill will always suggest you are searching for "china is getting rid of us dollar", myriads of articles about rumors of china getting rid of their multi billion dollar deposits, mostly fueled by guys that want to see gold and silver prices rise and scammers that try to sell you their "safe" investement methods.

 

[Deck Knight]

Predicting Europe becomes a Neo-Caliphate because it refuses to reproduce and is extremely late acting, having imported very fertile people that do not share their values as their primary workforce.

The United States will collapse economically unless it gets a serious handle on its unfunded liabilities, however it is very culturally insulated because of an extremely diverse and intermarried population whose primary connections are ideological (Rule of Law, Political and Economic Freedom) and not explicitly tribal. If the United States goes it brings Canada and several other economies down with it.

China has a massive imbalance of the sexes and this frustration will end with either war or an en masse age-out that will cripple their economy on a much grander scale and faster pace than what may happen to the US.

Assuming the collapse of the West, Africa and South America will have many aspects of their economy freed up because European nations aren't trying to impose solar panels over internal combustion engines, and they can actually feed their people and grow their independent technological base. Unfortunately Africa has the same Neo-Caliphate problem that Europe does, while South America has a similar cultural insulation factor shared by the United States - just more native Spanish speakers than native English ones.

Which leaves India and the Islamic States to duke it out. Personally I'm rooting for our new Hindu overlords, assuming the Peruvians don't get here first.

 

[Cresselia~~]

Predicting Europe becomes a Neo-Caliphate because it refuses to reproduce and is extremely late acting, having imported very fertile people that do not share their values as their primary workforce.

The United States will collapse economically unless it gets a serious handle on its unfunded liabilities, however it is very culturally insulated because of an extremely diverse and intermarried population whose primary connections are ideological (Rule of Law, Political and Economic Freedom) and not explicitly tribal. If the United States goes it brings Canada and several other economies down with it.

China has a massive imbalance of the sexes and this frustration will end with either war or an en masse age-out that will cripple their economy on a much grander scale and faster pace than what may happen to the US.

Assuming the collapse of the West, Africa and South America will have many aspects of their economy freed up because European nations aren't trying to impose solar panels over internal combustion engines, and they can actually feed their people and grow their independent technological base. Unfortunately Africa has the same Neo-Caliphate problem that Europe does, while South America has a similar cultural insulation factor shared by the United States - just more native Spanish speakers than native English ones.

Which leaves India and the Islamic States to duke it out. Personally I'm rooting for our new Hindu overlords, assuming the Peruvians don't get here first.

I really don't think much of Africa would become anything big, apart from South Africa.
Much of Africa is economically colonized by Chinese investors, and they appear very defenseless at it.
Even if China falls, these African countries probably still have lots to deal with, or basically, becomes economically colonized by other richer Asian countries.
They've always been defenseless towards different forms of colonization throughout history.
You just rarely ever see any technological breakthrough/ inventions/ whatever that comes from Africa.
Actually, I don't even know if anything of modern use is invented in Africa.
Africa just totally pales when it comes to technology or finances. Loosing just the West + China still isn't going to make them rise.

If the entire Europe and China falls at the same time, I'd say India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand will rise.
Thing with Indonesia and Thailand in particular is that they have a lot of young people, but very few old people. They don't have the pension stress like Europe and China face.

China's population age is actually very worrying, as other people here have pointed out.

 

[Deck Knight]

Predicting you are some poorly educated american rightist with no idea of what is going on in the world and only fueled by xenophobia and stupidity.

Recent migrant flows only rose EU islamic population by 1%, most of that 1% is going to return to their home since its mostly war refuges, islamic population does not have a blowing demographic either, studies show that immigrants adapt very fast to the average birth rate of the local population, in many cases like syria, the population had an aging demographic just like in the western world, its not like the 4% of EU muslims will turn into a Califate any time soon.

edit: messed leftist with rightist,

You do realize I was not speaking about only the "refugee" crisis but the larger overall trend in Europe over the last several decades of importing North African workers, as well as enabling a very large Pakistani Islamic subculture. That's just England though, which will probably last the longest (Islands have benefits.)

They already have to cover up and excuse massive sexual assault problems in Colgne and Sweden. I suppose all those victims are just stupid rightist xenophobes as well.

Demographics is destiny. Very fertile, violent people fueled by a conqueror ideology, that posess weapons have a VERY good track record in world history against stagnant, crumbling republics.

Finally, it's utterly stupid in concept to talk about xenophobia in a thread about future would powers. Considering how many world powers have sprung up from invasion and internal tribalist conflicts, observing that their are massive cultural differences between the Islamic world and the West (and their disparate population replacement levels where the two mix) should not be controversial.