David Skilling: When China shakes the world

After another bad week for Western (or more precisely, Anglo) political leadership – from the revelations in Mr Comey’s Senate testimony, to the political uncertainty in the UK after a remarkably poor election campaign – it is worth thinking about China’s emerging position of global leadership.

This emergence is partly due to US withdrawal on global issues like trade and climate change. But the behaviour of the US is simply accelerating what was an inevitable rebalancing of economic and political leadership.  China overtook the US as the world’s biggest economy (in PPP terms) in 2014, and may well become the largest economy on market exchange rates in the next few decades (although there are many risks to this, as noted below).

Brian Gaynor: Why India will blossom into globe’s next growth engine

It is important for investors to keep a close eye on long-term trends as well as short-term developments. With this in mind, recently released long-term population predictions are essential reading for investors even though most of them are almost totally focused on the June year profit announcements at present.

The United Nations Population Division’s long-term population projections, which are summarised in the accompanying table, received considerable international media attention this week. These figures clearly show why emerging economies have become more important in recent years.