The safest prediction for 2012

Some New Year’s predictions are easier to make than others. However, surely the safest prediction to make for 2012 is that China will continue to buy up trillions of dollars of American debt on its way to becoming the next number one world superpower.

In part, the West has nothing but itself to blame in this respect having transferred know-how, skills and jobs to China in the name of greed and the quest for even more money to place in the hands of fewer and fewer people.

Some naively point to the fact that labour costs are so low in China. Nevertheless wages in China are rising and in the West we are close reaching the tipping point where wages are beginning to fall. Multi-nationals are already bringing back call centre jobs from India not because talking to someone with limited English language skills annoys their customers, but because wages are rising in India.

To explain the successful rise of Capitalism in China many people have over-looked some rather startling facts. Those who have chosen to chronicle and explain the rise of capitalism first in Europe beginning with the Industrial Revolution and more latterly in interpreting the rise of the USA to become the world’s number one superpower have frequently offered up the explanation of the ‘Protestant Work Ethic.’

Surprisingly few people have chosen to use such an analysis when explaining the rise of China. In 1949 China had fewer than half a million Christians. Estimates now suggest there may now be as many as 130 million! There are already more practising Christians in China that the whole of Europe. Churches are being built faster in China than anywhere else in the world and the Nanjing Amity Printing Company is the biggest printer of Bibles in the world.

The city of Wenzhou just south of Shanghai has a population of 8 million and the reputation of being the most entrepreneurial manufacturing area in China. Perhaps by now it should be no surprise to find that one of the most Christian cities is Wenzhou. It already has 1,339 churches and these are simply the ones approved by the state. Local people claim that Christianity has provided them with an ethical framework in which to cope with the social transformation of Communism to Capitalism. In a country where state officials are corrupt and people cheat and steal they say it is easier to trust fellow Christians who they claim who are more hard-working and honest. Just as in Protestant Europe and America in the early days of the Industrial revolution, fellow religious communities act as both reliable credit networks and suppliers of creditworthy, hard-working honest people.

One suspects that Max Weber might say the West has been hoist by its own petard.