From the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER:
Does the world economic crisis presage the end of the 500-year rise of Western civilization and its replacement by China and a new Asian order? That seems to be the thesis of Scottish historian and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson, who specializes in the rise and fall of empires.
Ferguson recently received the sixth annual Benjamin Franklin Public Service Award from the Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia, on which occasion he spoke about his alarming conclusions. He noted that five centuries ago, the world’s most advanced civilizations might have existed under China’s Ming Dynasty or the Ottoman Empire, not in the primitive feudal states of Europe. But Western civilization ascended through technological and scientific innovation – which Ferguson says is not just the most important factor behind one civilization’s dominance over others, but the only factor.
One consequence of the current economic crisis is that it limits technological and scientific innovation in the West. Meanwhile, China’s growing economy, productivity, trade surplus, and large pool of scientists and engineers are giving it the upper hand…
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