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One surprising map highlights how geopolitical power has oscillated over the past two thousand years. It was created by estimating the earth's economic center of gravity after averaging GDP in particular places and at specific times around the world. In this map, featured this week in an article by SecDev in the Boston Globe, the global economic center of gravity is calculated by weighting GDP in three dimensions, including in relation to the nearest point on the earth's surface. The map was inspired by the scholarly contributions of Quah (2011), Maddison (2010) and Grether and Mathys (2009), among others. The map here was developed by McKinsey's Global Institute, and updated in 2020.
The map describes how the economic might of nations moved from east to west over the course of centuries, and then snapped rapidly back east over the past few decades. The map offers a reminder that this is not the first time this has happened. Between 1-1,000 AD, China and India appear to be the leading global economies. The industrialization of Western Europe and North America pulled the center westward between the 1800s and 1950. Japan's twentieth century post-war boom pulled the center eastward between 1950 and 1980. A resurging China dragged the center of gravity dramatically eastward between 1990 and 2020 at a faster pace than at any time in human history.
Short of a major disruption, the economic center of gravity will continue drifting eastward until 2030, albeit more slowly than in the recent past. One of the drivers of the most recent eastward drift is rapid urbanization of Asia, especially China. As people move to cities, especially secondary ones, wealth and economic growth increase. Other factors include massive investments in infrastructure and social-economic development, including breathtaking poverty reduction. One of the many policy implications is that future global governance - politically and economically - is no longer restricted to a club of wealthy western countries but requires far more inclusion of the east.
The Eastern drift is already leading to the reconfiguration of the physical and digital infrastructure of globalization. In 2021, for example, China signalled its desire to lead the creation of new standards for the future of the Internet. To be sure, China hopes to realign the Internet in line with its own global and domestic security priorities. While designing-in security into the architecture of the future Internet will be welcomed by some business leaders, it could lead to more unrestricted government control over the internet. Meanwhile, countries such as China and Russia are adopting crypto currencies and exchanges to rewire the world’s financial system and reduce their dependence on western banks and institutions. These efforts could very well lead to the emergence of a new global crypto reserve currency displacing the US dollar as the unit for global trade.
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