The title of world economic leader is not exactly honorific. It has give the United States, a fundamental advantage for decades, and has become one of the most important factors in shaping the world as we know it. But by now, anyone who studies or plans for the future should become increasingly clear that things are about to change: the next world leader will be China, a role for which it has been preparing for decades now.
China’s plan to become an absolute world leader makes a lot of sense, and begins with the most important factor in its transition: data. This is country where there is no right to privacy, a place where the state is the main provider data, and it knows absolutely everything and shares it with its companies, establishing identification systems through biometric data, a universal credit rating system, or a Department of Precrime are not going to come up against the obstacles they would in the West.
The country has managed to create a huge domestic market with very different players to the rest of the world: the world’s leading technology companies are no longer from the United States only, are profitable, and they are ready to take global markets by storm, while the leading occidental companies from the previous stage are being held back by laws that attempt to reduce their perceived excessive power. In China, Apple is no longer a major competitor…