COVER: Asia Rising (Atlantic and Pacific editions). Senior Editor Rana Foroohar reports that the economic crisis has China concerned about the huge amounts of money loaned to the U.S. Emerging giants like China are stronger, more economically competent and vastly richer. Their confidence has only increased amid what is widely described as the worst "global" recession in 70 years, but is, in fact, not truly global. It is shrinking the richest economies, but only slowing the emerging giants. That growth gap is destined to reshape the economic future of the world. The grim consumer outlook, unemployment paranoia and general siege mentality that's taken hold in the West is also largely absent in Asia, and Americans are ceding the role of world's most resilient shoppers to the Chinese and Indians. The big question for China has been whether it can forge an economy that depends not on exports to the West, but on consumption.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/190387
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090322/NYSU001 )
POINT OF VIEW: The New Shopping Superpower. Jim O'Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, writes that there has been much concern over whether this is the end for the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) "dream." The simple answer is no. "While I predicted a few years back that the BRIC economies would together be larger in dollar terms than the G7 by 2035, I now believe that this shift could happen much faster -- by 2027." At the heart of this shift in consumer power is China. Its total economy already equals that of the other three BRICs put together, and what happens to China is critical for the BRICs, and the world. "With the authorities announcing plans to introduce medical insurance to 90 percent of the rural community by 2011, a huge infrastructure-spending program and a massive easing of monetary and financial conditions, the only debate in my mind is exactly when China will restore its growth rate back above 8 percent."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/190384
COVER: "We Have to be Bold" (Latin America edition). Newsweek international Editor Fareed Zakaria interviews Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, who says the economic crisis is an opportunity for his country to do more. Lula's turn to free-market liberalism helped his country become Latin America's biggest economic success story. Earlier this month he became the first Latin leader to be received at the White House, and in April he will head to London for the G20 summit on the global financial crisis. "The more crises, the more investment you have to make. So we're investing today in Brazil what we never invested in for the last 30 years, in railroads, highways, waterways, dams, bridges, airports, ports, housing projects, basic sanitation. We have to be bold, because in Brazil we have many things to do that in other countries were already done many years ago," he says.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/190352
POINT OF VIEW: Turkey's Secret Power Brokers. Soner Cagaptay, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author, writes that tales of a sinister "Deep State" (Derin Devlet) have surfaced in a recent court case alleging that underneath Turkey's modern democracy lies a powerful but invisible security and bureaucratic establishment plotting to undermine the elected government. According to government prosecutors, the Deep State, identified as a group of judges, journalists, union leaders, artists and retired military officers, were plotting a coup against the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) while also planning Islamist, Marxist and pro-Kurdish terror attacks. In Turkey, these accusations have gained traction, for the simple reason that the country has long had a dominant security clique. Yet what the current rumors miss is that that power base has been broken up in recent years. Today it's the Islamists who are pulling the strings.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/190390
The Muslim Next Door. Special Correspondent Paul Hockenos reports that the gulf between Europe's 16 million Muslims and the secular societies in which they live all too often breeds misunderstanding, resentment and even violence. One reason for the difficulty in integrating in the EU countries is that the clerics are usually imported from Turkey or the Arab world, and they struggle to help their fellow community members adapt. But this month, an experimental new school for imams opened in an outlying eastern district of Berlin that may help provide a model for the nurturing of a distinctly European strand of Islam. The daunting mission of this new school, and a growing handful of similar initiatives in Europe, is to cater to the needs of Muslims in Europe while negotiating between the cultures of Islam and the West. The 29 students enrolled this year, all of them born or raised in Europe (and all of them men), will take Arabic language and Muslim theology classes along with German and civics.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/190385
WORLD VIEW: How the West Turned From Kiev. Denis MacShane, British Labour M.P. formerly Britain's minister for Europe, writes that just five years ago Ukraine was the toast of pro-democracy politicians the world over, but now the world's democracies are turning their back on Ukraine. The country faces many internal domestic problems that the EU and the United States are largely powerless to influence, with its economy in shambles and arguing between politicians. "What's needed now is a new policy that treats Ukraine, warts and all, as a European nation. Instead of listening to the nyet from Moscow, the United States and the EU need to start saying da to Kiev's moderate and modernizing politicians."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/190389
THE LAST WORD: Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Argentine lawyer and representative of the International Criminal Court. Ocampo discusses human rights, Sudan and whether an Obama-led America will join the court. "I'm just the prosecutor. My role is to collect the facts and the evidence; that is what I did. If people don't know how to manage the facts, it's a challenge. But it's not my job to say how to do it. Bashir will keep committing the crimes, whatever we do. He is exterminating millions of people in front of the eyes of the international community. The court is not calling for armies to manage the country. It's a different way to manage global conflict."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/190392
