The myth of America's decline
By Rob Asghar, Special to CNN
Thu November 17, 2011

People's Liberation Army soldiers at National Stadium in Beijing after the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The rapid growth of China and India does not mean the U.S. has fallen behind, Rob Asghar says
• Both face major environmental and infrastructural challenges within the next decade, he says
• Many East and South Asia societies are facing resistance to progress, Asghar says
• Asghar: U.S. may sabotage its tilt toward innovative growth if political dysfunction continues

Editor's note: Rob Asghar is a Fellow at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy and a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Los Angeles (CNN) -- China is poised to become the world's largest economy within a decade, according to some economists. Rising giant India already has a middle-class population that is larger than the entire United States population, according to others.
Such nuggets fuel an industry of prophetic warnings of decline, exemplified by the phrase "How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented" in the subtitle of Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum's recent best-seller.
The rapid growth of China and India and other Asian tigers does not mean that the United States has "fallen behind," however. It takes a panicked perspective to even ponder the point.
China and India have immense economies, each with state-of-the-art technological centers that put others to shame. But they are also ranked 125th and 162nd, respectively, in GDP per capita (according to the CIA's World Factbook), lacking clean water and safe food for too many citizens.

Rob Asghar

Both face massive environmental and infrastructural challenges within the next decade. Neither country is in range of providing an American level of services to its citizenry, much less the comfortable level typical of flourishing Northern European economies.
And if we consider the deeper cultural dimensions of globalization and innovation, one could go so far as to argue that the globalization game is and will remain rigged in America's favor, with other nations not being able or even willing to catch up.
In truth, many societies in East and South Asia are confronting ambivalence and resistance to developments that we might see as progress but that their traditionalists see as moral and social decline.
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Source: Special to CNN