From the start, I want to emphasize that I am not writing this as a warning that China or India are "out to get us" or as a xenophobic diatribe. I just think the facts are fascinating and important to realize.

  And they came yesterday via a sharp piece by the Financial Times’ chief economics writer, Martin Wolf, who I read all the time–I don’t always agree with him but he, more often than not, makes a lot of sense largely because hd deals with facts and is no fan of the blind devotion to the so-called "free market". Here is what he had to say in a column titled "In the grip of a great convergence":

We are witnessing the reversal of the 19th and early 20th century era of divergent incomes. In that epoch, the peoples of western Europe and their most successful former colonies achieved a huge economic advantage over the rest of humanity. Now it is being reversed more quickly than it emerged. This is inevitable and desirable. But it also creates huge global challenges.

Essentially, to spare you a few paragraphs, it boils down to this: growth in China and India, in particular, is off the charts, compared to the slow drip in the U.S. and Western Europe. And that is narrowing the past gap between the wealth of nations. I give kudos for Wolf for saying that this is inevitable and desirable.

He then goes on:

What is unprecedented this time is not convergence, but the scale. Suppose China were to follow Japan’s path during the 1950s and 1960s. Then it would still have 20 years of very fast growth in front of it, reaching some 70 per cent of US output per head by 2030. At that point, its economy would be a little less than three times as large as that of the US, at PPP, and larger than that of the US and western Europe combined. India is further behind. At recent rates of growth, India’s economy would be about 80 per cent of that of the US by 2030, though its gross domestic product per head would still be less than a fifth of US levels.

And, then:

This divergence in growth is staggering. In an important speech in November, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, noted that in the second quarter of 2010, the aggregate real output of emerging economies was 41 per cent higher than at the start of 2005. It was 70 per cent higher in China and about 55 per cent higher in India. But, in the advanced economies, real output was just 5 per cent higher. For emerging countries, the "great recession" was a blip. For high-income countries, it was calamitous.

The great convergence is a world-transforming event. Today, the west – defined to include western Europe and its "colonial offshoots" (the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) – contains 11 per cent of the world’s population. But China and India contain 37 per cent. The present position of the former group of countries will not be sustained. It is a product of the great divergence. It will end with the great convergence.[emphasis added]

  The bottom line is that:

In the past few centuries, what was once the European and then American periphery became the core of the world economy. Now, the economies that became the periphery are re-emerging as the core. This is transforming the entire world.[emphasis added]

  Which is one reason I say to all my friends: have your kids study Chinese.

  The point is not that we should fear this–if our country can evolve into a place that knows how to engage people around the world with a spirit of cooperation, not hostility, and cease this senseless pursuit over trying to foist some belief about the "specialness of America" on the rest of the world–and engage in empty, childish acts.

  And I wonder: how many leaders in China and India watch what transpires here and just get a great belly laugh from the whole spectacle?