DJ: Dambisa, you think that we've thrown it all away. We had this dominant position here in the West and by our own folly, we've forfeited that position. But am I right in saying you don't think it's inevitable that we're finished?

Dambisa Moyo: First of all, with respect to whether this is something new, let's remember that if you look at Angus Maddison's data, this is not the first time that countries like China and India have had the biggest share of global GDP on the planet. The reason I point that out is because you can imagine in the 1500s and 1600s people writing about the decline of China and what they were doing wrong, and what the other regions of the world including some European countries and the United States — with the advent of industrialisation — did right. But the main thesis of my book, as you rightly point out, is less concerned with China's rise — about which there is an obsession — than about the West's decline. Capital, labour and productivity are the three key drivers of economic growth and in that framework, there is a compelling case that China is on the rise. But my book is mainly concerned with Western policies. And yet our obsession is always with what China is doing, almost to the detriment of focusing on the very basic, structural things that need to be fixed in Western society. 

DJ: China has moved forward with astonishing speed in the last 35 years since the death of Chairman Mao, but think about Britain between Waterloo in 1815 and the Great Exhibition in 1851. There was a similarly spectacular rise in exactly the same space of time. Several other great nations — the United States to give one example — have also achieved that take-off. So why should we be worried about the Chinese catching up in this way? Is this really a threat to our prosperity or does this just mean that China is finally joining the West?

NF: First of all, you have to realise that they are not quite comparable. It took Britain about 70 years to increase its GDP by a factor of four. China has increased its GDP by a factor of ten in about 25 years. This is the biggest and fastest industrial revolution. It really does dwarf the British industrial Revolution in its size and its speed. That in itself is a reason to be concerned, because for China to grow at 10 per cent per annum for another 20 plus years, with a fifth of humanity living there, implies massive strains on the environment, on the supply of natural resources, even on the availability of fresh water in the eastern Eurasian landmass. So there are huge implications which make the British industrial revolution pale into insignificance. The other issue of course, which Dambisa's book touches on, is power. This is not merely an economic phenomenon but also a geopolitical phenomenon. It has to be a cause of some concern that the economy poised to take over from the US as the world's number one is run by a Communist Party. That's an ironic twist to the end of history that Francis Fukuyama didn't foresee back in 1989. For that reason, there is cause not to be complacent and say that this is really the triumph of the West in another form: it's not really. We'd be kidding ourselves if we went to China and told ourselves that they are just westernising. They may be westernising the way they dress, to some extent the way they eat, the way that they do business, but not wholly. The way they do business is not in fact the same as the way it's done in the West and of course the way they do politics is profoundly different. 

DM: According to some estimates, there will be nine billion people on the planet by 2050 — just a short while away. With nine billion people on the planet, I could give you a list of statistics that are shocking, even today. There are a billion people around the world who go hungry every day, the majority of whom are in Africa. And yet Africa is the one place which has the most untilled arable land left on Earth. We're not even dealing with structural problems there. China only has seven per cent of arable land, and part of the reason why there's such a hue and cry about China's rise is that these resources are relatively scarce and the Chinese are leaps and bounds ahead of where the West should be in terms of securing natural resources — everything from arable land, to water, to minerals and energy. The reality is that the West has given it away. Essentially it's been given away because a lot of Western countries, including the US, have been short-sighted. Brazil and Chile are China's biggest trading partners in America's backyard. Africa is historically and geographically closer to Europe, which should create a natural trading relationship, but instead you see a stronger, firmer relationship with the Chinese. This is not to say that the relationship is perfect — it's evolving — but you only have to look around the world. It's not just the emerging world where the Chinese have put down a very clear stamp, it's everywhere from Australia to Eastern Europe to South America. In addition to that, the US are locked into this symbiotic relationship where they now owe so much money to the Chinese. I don't think in the short term they can get out of it.