This story originally appeared at Business Insider:
“Let’s be honest: 2018 doesn’t feel good,” Eurasia Group’s president, Ian Bremmer, and chairman, Cliff Kupchan, wrote in their annual “Top Risks” report.
“Yes, markets are soaring, and the economy isn’t bad, but citizens are divided,” Bremmer and Kupchan said. “Governments aren’t doing much governing. And the global order is unraveling.”
Their assessment of the biggest risks the world faces in 2018 spans the planet, from individual countries to global trends. Something big could happen, they say, to shake the world unlike anything in a decade.
“If we had to pick one year for a big unexpected crisis — the geopolitical equivalent of the 2008 financial meltdown — it feels like 2018,” Bremmer and Kupchan said. “Sorry.”
Here’s what Eurasia Group sees as the risks for 2018.
At the top of the list is the risk of a powerful and modern China filling a void left by the US in for the position of global leader.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is “the strongest Chinese president since Mao Zedong,” Bremmer and Kupchan said, adding that more countries are beginning to turn to China because of its “non-interference in other countries’ affairs.”
“At a moment of policy incoherence and dysfunction in Washington, China’s government has redefined the country’s external environment, set new rules within it, and developed the world’s most effective global trade and investment strategy,” Eurasia Group said.
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