TEDxLSE - Danny Quah - Global Tensions from a Rising East

Will the East slow before it counts? Is the East only big enough to be culpable but not mature enough to be responsible? Danny Quah is Professor of Economics and Kuwait Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Professor Quah holds degrees from Princeton and Harvard, and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining LSE. At the LSE he used to lecture in the largest course (Introductory Economics) taught in the School. Professor Quah now teaches macroeconomics and econometrics in a number of BSc and MSc programmes. Professor Quah has consulted for governments and international financial organizations. Some of Quah's writings have been translated into 18 languages. His research now focuses on the global economy, economic growth and development, income inequality, and international economic relations. He is investigating in particular the eastwards drift of global economic activity, and the implications of such ongoing shift: he tries to make large things visible to the naked eye. Professor Quah was born in Malaysia. He holds a blackbelt in taekwon-do and used to compete regularly in regional and national championships. The fact is undisputed that the developed economies continue to hold the world's primary sphere of political influence: Thus, the reasoning goes, if the rise of the emerging economies — the Great Shift East — challenges anything in the global order, that challenge can be only apparent and its perception only transient. The emerging economies' fast growth is nothing more than their picking low-hanging fruit, i.e., doing the easy things that allow economic development. Emerging economies will slow long before they count. After all, with the export-oriented development strategies that so many emerging economies have undertaken, if the developed countries were to stop consuming and importing, surely growth in the emerging economies would grind to a halt. This presentation addressed two broad sets of issues. First, what are the already-extant contours of the Great Shift East, and what is the likelihood of their reversal? I will conclude that those changes are more pronounced and more entrenched — and thus less reversible — than might at first appear and certainly so when compared to other recent historical episodes. This holds enormous promise for improving the lot of humanity: the Great Shift East will continue to lift out of deep absolute poverty hundreds of millions of the world's very poorest people. These changes, however, take nothing away from how it is the developed countries that will remain the centre of global political influence. As a result the Great Shift East will produce massive global economic and political misalignment: the world's economic and political centres of gravity will separate and drift further apart. And that, in turn, will raise staggering challenges: these latter comprise the other focus of my presentation. How will the global political system adjust to these ongoing economic changes on the scale that have already occurred and will almost surely continue? About TEDx, x = independently organized event: In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations).