Economist Angus Maddison projects that China will become the world's dominant economic superpower much sooner than expected--not in 2050, but in 2015.
While short-term investors are already cashing in on China's growth by playing the global commodities boom, smart long-term thinkers are contemplating what happens when China matures from an exporter of cheap goods to a competitor in sectors where the U.S. is dominant--technology, brand building, finance. China has almost wiped out U.S. makers of low-value items like toys and socks, but by 2015 it may threaten Apple, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Procter & Gamble. It will increasingly influence the S&P 500 and the mutual funds in our 401(k)s. So it's worth looking at how that will happen, what it means, and what anyone can do in the seven years before the baton is passed.
How about learning Mandarin?
Source: Fortune, http://money.cnn.com