UK shoppers' last hurrah as economic power shifts to East

It certainly didn't feel like the fall of the Western economic empire this weekend, as I fought my way through crowds of shoppers at the market in Manchester.

The festive UK shopping frenzy this weekend may turn out to be one last, credit card-fuelled hurrah as the British economy teeters on a decline. Phil Noble / AFP

It certainly didn't feel like the fall of the western economic empire this weekend, as I fought my way through crowds of shoppers at a market in Manchester, England.

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Judging by the number of bags being carried and the queues at the cash registers, capitalism is alive and kicking. I gave up trying to eat after four restaurants were too packed.

In a beautiful twist of irony, business was also booming last Wednesday. About 2 million UK government workers went on strike to protest against cuts to their lucrative pensions - and the massed ranks of the impoverished proletariat vented their anger by going shopping. The research company Experian says retail footfall was up 38 per cent from the same day last year.

This raises an important question. Is the West really in terminal decline, or will history record the European debt crisis as just a blip?

I care for three reasons: academically, because I'm a trained economist; sentimentally, because I'm British; and selfishly because I live and work in Dubai, which relies on global trade and oil consumption for much of its momentum.

Fortunately, two of my favourite economists have recently written books on the subject; Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs; and Stephen King of HSBC. Both agree the shift of economic power from West to East is real, but they're split on how bad this will be for people in the old powerhouses of Europe and the US.

Let's begin with O'Neill, who released his book The Growth Map: Economic Opportunity in the Brics and Beyond just a couple of weeks ago. It was O'Neill who coined the acronym Brics a decade ago, when he predicted "the global economy would be propelled by the growth of four populous and economically ambitious countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China." Their economies have quadrupled since he made that prediction, while the global economy has only doubled.

Today, he says he is "more eager than ever" to convince the world this is true. The Brics, along with many of the so-called Next Eleven fast-growing countries, including Indonesia, Korea, Mexico and Turkey, are now so powerful that to describe them as "emerging" markets is folly. He prefers to call them growth markets.

Goldman Sachs predicts China will overtake the US as the world's biggest economy in 2027. About the same time, the combined GDP of the Brics will overtake the Group of 7 industrialised nations.

Perhaps surprisingly, O'Neill argues that is not all bad news for the West. Like me, he was born and raised in Manchester, and while he's a few years older, we both grew up in a city suffering economic decline after the factories of the 19th century industrial revolution were killed off by cheap competition from Asia.

But Manchester and other industrial cities reinvented themselves in the 1980s, based on great universities, innovation, precision engineering and services such as cultural industries in television, music and sport.

O'Neill cites the thriving British and German car manufacturing industries as examples of how the West at its best can tap the East as a market, not just a competitor.

Even more surprisingly, he's cautious on the long-term oil price, a subject he knows well having written his PhD on Opec. "At key moments in history, man has found solutions to his most acute problems," writes O'Neill, arguing that green energy technology will progress at such a rapid pace between now and 2050 that oil demand will be lower than today.

Stephen King's book was published last year. As its name suggests, Losing Control: the Emerging Threats to Western Prosperity is less optimistic about the prospects for the traditional economic powers.

King tells us to focus on "the long sweep of economic and political progress, and all too frequent reversal" in understanding the current rise of China, India, Russia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and eastern Europe. "As China begins to throw its weight around, the West will no longer be able to take its economic progress for granted," he warns bluntly.

He says the rise of the western economic powers was due, in part, to their manipulation of markets. "In the 19th century, western nations rigged market rules to suit themselves, whether through acts of protectionism, drug trafficking or the law of the gunboat."

Of course, those days are over, and with them will go the cushy lifestyles of people living in a handful of rich nations. "Capital can cross borders more easily. In the process, the economic rents earned by some western workers - in the form of high wages, healthcare benefits, lucrative pensions and employment rights - are under threat."

My heart wants to believe O'Neill. But my head tells me King is right. In a truly global economy, teachers and accountants in Manchester will ultimately earn the same as those in Mumbai and Moscow. Millions living comfortable lives (by eastern standards) on government welfare could be in for an even bigger shock.

I fear the festive shopping frenzy I saw this weekend may turn out to be one last, credit card-fuelled hurrah.

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