LONDON — U.S. President Barack Obama caught the imagination of the world when he talked recently of a new "Sputnik moment." He outlined a bold plan for improving education, infrastructure and technology, and vividly compared the resolve required to put a man on the moon to the determination needed to restore growth to the U.S. economy.
Obama is right to say that the West faces not only great challenges, but also great opportunities. In the last decade, the global economy was transformed by 1 billion Asian workers entering the ranks of industrial producers. In 2011, for the first time in two centuries, Europe and America face being out-produced, out-exported and out-invested by China and the rest of the world.
Yet Asia's growth also gives the West unprecedented economic hope. In this decade, the world will be transformed yet again by the rise of the Asian consumer. By 2020, Asia's domestic markets will be twice the size of America's. The world's middle class will have swelled from 1 billion consumers to 3 billion.