China

What is driving world economic growth very fast? Asia, in particular China, India and Vietnam. They each have partly liberalised their economies after years of stagnation under central planning controls.

China has a population of 1.3 billion and a GDP growth of 9.9 per cent, Vietnam's population is 85 million and its GDP growth 8.4 per cent, India has 1.1 billion people and GDP growth of 7.6 per cent.

In 1984 China's economy was one-fourteenth the size of the US economy, and by 2005 was one-sixth the size of a much bigger American economy. The prediction is that by 2030 the Chinese economy will be larger than US economy.

China is now in the middle of a process of settling about 500 million people in new or expanded cities over a 20-year period. This, in effect, means that China is building two new London each year in either new, or expanded cities. This rate of development is unprecedented in world history, nothing previously even comes close. In 2005, China used 54 per cent of the world demand for cement!

It's an amazing experiment on a huge scale, which has never worked anywhere in the history of mankind. To have any hope of success China needs to keep growing its economy at more than 8 per cent a year for at least another 25 years while about 20 million people a year are switched to industrial/service jobs and away from peasant farming.

Currently China consumes 19 per cent of the current global grain harvest. Most projections estimate that demand will increase to at least 40 per cent of global grain harvest by 2031.