The China house of cards - a 2009 scenario

China, a nation with depleted natural resources, depleted and contaminated water resources, high levels of pollution, environmental degradation and high unemployment faces rising levels of civil unrest. It faces a world less reliant on its cheap consumer goods and desperate to reduce the effects of global warming and restructuring their own economies.

China’s influence on the world's economic stage is declining. Too preoccupied with its own social conscience and pressure from lobbyists, the West failed to interpret the signals coming out of Russia and lost an early opportunity to de-escalate global military threats. While experiencing the effects of the global recession, Russia emerges in 2009 as a stable and professionally managed nation with increasing national pride and in control of its future.

Russia now has the opportunity to focus on the repopulation and development of the Far East's extensive natural resources where unrest is on the rise because of the huge numbers of illegal Han Chinese migrants settled throughout the region and Chinese dominate the construction and other strategic sectors.

A new era in world peace?

It is conceivable that an economically weakened China could raise the potential for new global co-operation, as a new administration appears willing to bring about change and improve US relations with Europe, Africa, Russia, Asia, and the Middle East.

This possibility, combined with continuing low oil prices, could also prove effective in reducing terrorism and calming militant factions in Central Asia and the Middle East.

A new globalisation model

The social conscience of developed nations' consumers may demand a realistic level playing field in which import and export tariffs reflect the producer countries footprints of environmental degradation, global warming, wealth gaps, human rights abuse, health, and education.

2009 and 2010 has the potential to lay the foundations for a new global economic era in which Russia will most likely replace China.