The reach of globalization was substantially broadened during the last 20 years by Chinese and Indian economic liberalization, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the worldwide information technology revolution.  Through the next 15 years, it will sustain world economic growth, raise world living standards, and substantially deepen global interdependence.  At the same time, it will profoundly shake up the status quo almost everywhere�generating enormous economic, cultural, and consequently political convulsions.

Certain aspects of globalization, such as the growing global inter-connectedness stemming from the information technology revolution, are likely to be irreversible.  Real-time communication, which has transformed politics almost everywhere, is a phenomenon that even repressive governments would find difficult to expunge.

• It will be difficult, too, to turn off the phenomenon of entrenched economic interdependence, although the pace of global economic expansion may ebb and flow.  Interdependence has widened the effective reach of multinational business, enabling smaller firms as well as large multinationals to market across borders and bringing heretofore non-traded services into the international arena.

Yet the process of globalization, powerful as it is, could be substantially slowed or even reversed, just as the era of globalization in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries was reversed by catastrophic war and global depression.  Some features that we associate with the globalization of the 1990s�such as economic and political liberalization�are prone to �fits and starts� and probably will depend on progress in multilateral negotiations, improvements in national governance, and the reduction of conflicts.  The freer flow of people across national borders will continue to face social and political obstacles even when there is a pressing need for migrant workers.

Moreover, the character of globalization probably will change just as capitalism changed over the course of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.  While today�s most advanced nations�especially the United States�will remain important forces driving capital, technology and goods, globalization is likely to take on much more of a �non-Western face� over the next 15 years.

• Most of the increase in world population and consumer demand through 2020 will take place in today�s developing nations�especially China, India, and Indonesia�and multinational companies from today�s advanced nations will adapt their �profiles� and business practices to the demands of these cultures.
  
  
  
• Able to disperse technology widely and promote economic progress in the developing world, corporations already are seeking to be �good citizens� by allowing the retention of non-Western practices in the workplaces in which they operate.  Corporations are in the position to make globalization more palatable to people concerned about preserving unique cultures.
  
  
  
• New or expanding corporations from countries lifted up by globalization will make their presence felt globally through trade and investments abroad.
  
  
  
• Countries that have benefited and are now in position to weigh in will seek more power in international bodies and greater influence on the �rules of the game.�
  
  
  
• In our interactions, many foreign experts have noted that while popular opinion in their countries favors the material benefits of globalization, citizens are opposed to its perceived �Americanization,� which they see as threatening to their cultural and religious values.  The conflation of globalization with US values has in turn fueled anti-Americanism in some parts of the world.

Currently, about two-thirds of the world�s population live in countries that are connected to the global economy.  Even by 2020, however, the benefits of globalization won�t be global.  Over the next 15 years, gaps will widen between those countries benefiting from globalization�economically, technologically, and socially�and those underdeveloped nations or pockets within nations that are left behind.  Indeed, we see the next 15 years as a period in which the perceptions of the contradictions and uncertainties of a globalized world come even more to the fore than is the case today.

An Expanding and Integrating Global Economy
The world economy is projected to be about 80 percent larger in 2020 than it was in 2000 and average per capita income to be roughly 50 percent higher.  Large parts of the world will enjoy unprecedented prosperity, and a numerically large middle class will be created for the first time in some formerly poor countries.  The social structures in those developing countries will be transformed as growth creates a greater middle class.  Over a long time frame, there is the potential, so long as the expansion continues, for more traditionally poor countries to be pulled closer into the globalization circle.

Most forecasts to 2020 and beyond continue to show higher annual growth for developing countries than for high-income ones.  Countries such as China and India will be in a position to achieve higher economic growth than Europe and Japan, whose aging work forces may inhibit their growth.  Given its enormous population�and assuming a reasonable degree of real currency appreciation�the dollar value of China�s gross national product (GNP) may be the second largest in the world by 2020.  For similar reasons, the value of India�s output could match that of a large European country.  The economies of other developing countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia, could surpass all but the largest European economies by 2020. [4]

• Even with all their dynamic growth, Asia�s �giants� and others are not likely to compare qualitatively to the economies of the US or even some of the other rich countries.  They will have some dynamic, world-class sectors, but more of their populations will work on farms, their capital stocks will be less sophisticated, and their financial systems are likely to be less efficient than those of other wealthy countries.

Continued Economic Turbulence.  Sustained high-growth rates have historical precedents.  China already has had about two decades of 7 percent and higher growth rates, and Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have managed in the past to achieve annual rates averaging around 10 percent for a long period.

Fast-developing countries have historically suffered sudden setbacks, however, and economic turbulence is increasingly likely to spill over and upset broader international relations.  Many emerging markets�such as Mexico in the mid-1990s and Asian countries in the late 1990s�suffered negative effects from the abrupt reversals of capital movements, and China and India may encounter similar problems.  The scale of the potential reversals would be unprecedented, and it is unclear whether current international financial mechanisms would be in a position to forestall wider economic disruption.