Dynamic effects

This year alone, Shanghai will complete towers with more space for living and working than there is in all the office buildings in New York City.

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That is in a city that already has 4,000 skyscrapers, almost double the number in New York.

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And there are designs to build 1,000 more by the end of this decade.

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By 2025, it is predicted that China will have 221 cities with more than a million inhabitants,

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This compared with 35 in Europe today.

As well as the need for huge spending on infrastructure, McKinsey projects that China will build between 20,000 and 50,000 skyscrapers.

Many of them in less developed interior provinces far from Beijing and Shanghai

Skyscrapers are one thing consumption of resources by China and India is already changing world commodity patterns along with shifts in political influence

The energetic dynamics of China, India and others are changing the world in many other ways too, for example tourism, shipping, media globalisation, and Asian dollar currency holdings

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Recent Russian assertiveness is also introducing a different sort of tension and dynamic

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Tensions will arising over many subjects as a result of this shift in global dynamics

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Must continue to do so

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And yet the people of these countries would rather like to have normal lives free from violence and war

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Will a new generation of leaders help move things away from the old sabre rattling?

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Will the Internet and other communications help or hinder our knowledge of each other?

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Time will show

In the meantime it wouldn't do any harm for the West to adjust it's thinking about these issues

As individuals we can also become better informed

Without hysteria we can help to create better understanding

Understanding comes when we know more about each other

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That in turn comes about through travel and living in each others countries

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Many tens of thousands of young Chinese, Russians and Indians already study in the West

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What kind of impressions do they gain?

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Are we really conscious that many of them are going to be the movers and shakers in the years to come?

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Do we even care?

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Time to make our own contributions to better understanding

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All of us please