| Mehmet Murat BEKDİK | |
| Editor-in-Chief |
|
In The 21st Century, The Fate Of Humanity Will To A Great Degree Be Determined By The Developments In China And India |
India has invested 3 billion dollars for this global risky discovery business and been declaring that they will invest another 1 billion dollars to achieve success. It is expected that China, who has invested 15 billion dollars in the business of searching for petrol in the foreign lands, will spend ten times as much as this sum in the following ten years. In Zheng Hongei’s opinion, who is energy researcher in Beijing University of Technology, there is not enough resource in the world to meet the increasing energy needs of China and India.
According to the Beijing Institute of Energy Research, in the year 2010, the number of the cars in India will be 36 times as many as it was in 1990 and in the year 2030 it will surpass the number of cars in the USA. Even only in this year, it is expected that more than 4.5 million new vehicles will begin to be on the roads of China; this situation is quite different from that of the times when families saved money for months to buy a bicycle.
Today, China is the biggest petrol importer after the USA; it devours approximately 6.5 million barrels of petrol a day. Steven Roach, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley, says this quantity will be twice as much in the year 2020. India, which is the second most fast developing country in the world after China consumes 2.2 million barrels of petrol a day; this quantity is nearly as much as that of Southern Korea and according to the Energy Information Department of the USA, it will increase to 5.3 barrels of petrol a day.
The impact of all these developments on the developing countries who meet their global economy, especially petrol needs through import will be devastating. International Energy Agency states that 1 dollar increase in the petrol prices makes the global economy lose 25 billion dollars.
On the other hand, the development which makes the Western Troika even more anxious is the upheaval in the relationship of China and India with Iran. Iran is a country which the USA tries to alienate. Beijing and New Delhi signed a25-year gas and petrol agreement with Iran a short time ago. The value of these sources is between 150 and 200 billion and it must be remembered that the mentioned two countries have also been developing defense collaboration with Iran. Iran and India performed a joint marine maneuver in September, 2003, the first time in their history and India agreed to renew the Russian made kilo-class submarines and MIG battle aircrafts which were worn out.
Another anxiety matter concerning China and India is pollution. A large part of the most polluted cities of the world is in China and India. Let alone the humane expenditures, The World Bank states that the costs of pollution is 50 billion dollars in China and 15 billion dollars in India. These figures comprise the 10% of the Gross National Income of the said countries. Moderate Chinese and Indian towns have reached the size of some cities; being able to arrive at their workplaces in two hours makes a lot of middle-class people dream of having a car and the increase in car ownership brings about the city’s growing outwards by destroying the forests and devouring wide meadows and productive fields.
To sum up, while the relationships of China and India with the West keep on fluctuating between collaboration and conflict, the movements to determine the fate of humanity in the 21st century, no matter how, will come from neither Europe, nor USA, who has a great deal more chance than Europe; but Asia, especially China and India.
