In September 2011, as Europe struggled to find solutions to its ongoing debt crisis, Robert Zoellick, then president of the World Bank, told the BBC:”I don’t think China will just come in as a white knight to try to provide money just to bail out Europeans. There would have to be some economic incentive.”
Thirty years ago, if one of the world’s preeminent economists presented the idea of China bailing out Europe he would have become a laughingstock.
With historical context, Zoellick’s remarks demonstrate just how much China’s has evolved over the past few decades. The China of 2013 is a world apart from the People’s Republic of Mao Zedong, and while China has emerged as an economic powerhouse over the past few decades, the United States and Europe are left wringing their hands over the debt crisis and the great recession.
In his new book, “Turnaround: Third World Lessons for First World Growth,” Peter Henry, dean of NYU’s Stern School of Business, examines emerging economies in countries like China, India and Brazil, and what the West can learn from them.