The Elephant and the Dragon
Last night I watched Charlie Rose's interview with Robyn Meredith, writer for Forbes Magazine, as well as author of, The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China, and What It Means for All of Us. Fascinating piece, but also a deeply troubling one. And although the individual components of the story have been out for awhile, somehow it wasn't until last night that I connected the dots.
Everyone is aware of the rise of China in recent years due to massive economic growth and development, and consequently as more MNC's build factories in China, more and more manufacturing jobs are moving overseas. Similarly with India, though it has developed more of a service economy than a manufacturing economy, it is also experiencing rapid economic growth. But what I didn't realize is that due to various reasons, China and India withdrew from the global markets for the past 50 years, giving us what Meredith calls a "free pass." However, because of the possibilities opened up through technology, both of these countries are rapidly engaging in the world markets and 1 billion new workers are now entering the global workforce. In other words, it hasn't been a slow, gradual change, but rather the impacts of this entrance into the global economy are going to be concentrated in a short timeframe.
Additionally, it is not just the size of the increase in the global workforce that will be competing with American and European jobs, but the quality as well. Meredith cites that there are around 1.3 million U.S. college graduates each year, whereas there are 2.6 million college graduates coming out of India each year, and 4.1 million Chinese graduates. Therefore it is not computer programmers vs. tennis-ball makers, but computer programmers vs. computer programmers. If you do the math, in a competitive global market, the forecast doesn't look good for American and European workers. As Meredith points out, it is simply not realistic for Americans to continue to earn 10 times more than the rest of the world. The global market will move towards equilibrium, and therefore the standard of living in the U.S. and Europe will look dramatically different in 30 years from how it is today.
Additionally, it is not just the size of the increase in the global workforce that will be competing with American and European jobs, but the quality as well. Meredith cites that there are around 1.3 million U.S. college graduates each year, whereas there are 2.6 million college graduates coming out of India each year, and 4.1 million Chinese graduates. Therefore it is not computer programmers vs. tennis-ball makers, but computer programmers vs. computer programmers. If you do the math, in a competitive global market, the forecast doesn't look good for American and European workers. As Meredith points out, it is simply not realistic for Americans to continue to earn 10 times more than the rest of the world. The global market will move towards equilibrium, and therefore the standard of living in the U.S. and Europe will look dramatically different in 30 years from how it is today.
What's more, if you add to this equation the global shift in Christianity's "center for gravity" (see Alister E. McGrath's book, The Future of Christianity) from the North Atlantic (between North America and Europe) to the Indian Ocean (between Africa and Asia), the implications are enormous. The world, both economically as well as religiously, will be radically different one generation from now.
Consequently, in terms of global missions, both the focus and strategy will necessarily change, as well as the ability of North American churches to support missionaries since the available financial resources will be much smaller. And that has big implications for us, the missionaries. The good news in all this, however, is two-fold. First, there will be millions people in India and China who will finally have an opportunity to come out of abject poverty and enjoy a reasonable standard of living. Secondly, in Europe where people have grown accustomed to their standard of living and have largely decided that God is irrelevant to their lives, the coming radical and rapid economic changes might give them pause to reconsider.
posted by John at Saturday, July 28, 2007
3 Comments:
Talking with Cathy, it's not clear that sheer numbers of graduates tells us anything. Cathy finished a B.Sc. in computer science, though most of what she would need would require another 1 year M.Sc. At Wheaton, anyway, the curriculum is made for people with a B.S. computer science to be able to enter the work force immediately. Gaps in quality of instruction will lessen as India becomes wealthier, though.
Hi Jay! Thanks for your comment. It's not surprising that degrees in other countries involve slightly different curricula from the U.S., and therefore aren't completely equivalent. Take for example Austria, where Zsofi studied Psychology. As opposed to the U.S. where undergrads study a range of topics while majoring in one or two disciplines, Zsofi's program involved 5 years of studying nothing but Psychology. No literature, no history, no kinesiology; just psychology. In which case, it's no real surprise that the Austrian undergraduate degree in Psychology is afforded more weight than the American B.S.
In any event, the variations in strength and scope of undergraduate studies across cultures notwithstanding, Meredith's point seems to be that the massive influx of Indian and Chinese workers into the global workforce isn't merely comprised of unskilled workers. Each year there are three times as many workers from these two countries entering the workforce with at least a comparative level of professional training as their American counterparts. Perhaps they still need an additional year or two of training to completely match the educational level of the Americans, but the important point is that these people aren't going to be workers who simply assemble tennis shoes.
The movement of workers and jobs will be important to this. A large surplus of engineers in India won't do India much good unless they can find suitable work. That affects the modern west only to the extent that immigration policies allow them to work here, our industries move jobs over there, or we buy goods once made here that are now made there. So the link story in the argument needs some fleshing out.
Yeah, the difference between liberal arts curricula and more specialized curricula--the theory behind the former is that it prepares people to be a free people--those who can make judgments about a wide range of subjects necessary for a free and good society. How that works out in practice is an interesting debate.
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