This is how Fortune magazine introduced its latest Fortune Global 500, the largest companies in the world by revenue:
“As the Chinese Century nears its third decade, Fortune’s Global 500 shows how profoundly the world’s balance of power is shifting. American companies account for 121 of the world’s largest corporations by revenue. Chinese companies account for 129 (including 10 Taiwanese companies). For the first time since the debut of the Global 500 in 1990, and arguably for the first time since World War II, a nation other than the U.S. is at the top of the ranks of global big business….It’s true that Chinese companies’ revenues account for only 25.6% of the Global 500 total, well behind America’s 28.8%. But that’s to be expected. China is the rising power, economically smaller but growing much faster.”
Yes, there are more Chinese companies than U.S. firms in the 2019 Fortune Global 500. Also notice that Fortune has called it the “Chinese Century”. As I always write, it is all China from here:”China now accounts for a whooping 42% of global commerce – more than France, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. combined.”
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The same way China ‘eats’ into America’s wealth, other countries need to also ‘eat’ into China’s wealth, but if we think we can just remain watchers and keep clapping hands for the rising China, then we are in a bigger trouble in the near future.
It’s only in Africa that we struggle to know whether big or small population is actually useful, neither has proven anything right in this continent. Both small and big countries can do well in other places, but in our case it’s either we attribute lack of productivity and misgovernance to undersize or we hang it round the neck of oversize.
Africa is the second largest continent by population, but yet her economy cannot even match those of some modest countries, and we keep living on hope, believing that some big magic could happen somehow.
If Nigeria complains about overpopulation, you now wonder what India will say. Something must be seriously wrong with this continent of ours.
I tell you it is about EXPANSION. China does not think now that it has population problem at scale. The resources we have in Nigeria can effectively accommodate 200m people if we manage them well