With his latest book, David Baverez establishes himself as one of the leading experts in global geoeconomics. He certainly owes this highly contested title to his vantage point in Hong Kong, where he resides, in the first city to have defected from the “Western world to the Middle of the Middle Kingdom”. It is certainly more difficult for a European observer – and even more so for a French one – to form, from the Old Continent, an an objective picture of the new balances – or rather of the emerging dynamics of the major global blocs.
The book is particularly rich in statistical data, literary references and personal anecdotes. The author demonstrates a flair for a flair for catchy phrases: “the rush for Or-Muz”, “a planet of chaos, not bipolar but apolar”, “four questions for a champion nation”, the “roaring 2020s of the United States”, States”, “the strange defeat of Europe” … Some phrases, however, however, present themselves as riddles to be deciphered. But above all, the author skilfully combines logic and emotion: the logic of Europe’s technological and economic decline; technological and economic decline of Europe; emotion aroused by its seemingly inescapable nature.
His diagnosis is unequivocal. Applying Laffer’s principle (“too much tax kills tax”), he concludes that “too much state kills the state”. He shares the current question on the minds of the French people: “Can France reform itself without violence?”. Are the French still capable of engaging in personal reflection rather than emotional reactions, to responsible reasoning rather than to ideological hallucinations? Will the French have time, before submitting to the “troika” (IMF, ECB, European Commission), to dismantle their socio-economic “anti-model” socio-economic “anti-model” and to “construct an original common narrative ” or, failing that, to align themselves with the German social model?
David Baverez sets out an arsenal of measures aimed at “turning on the Turgot”, by appealing to personal reflection rather than to emotional reactions, reactions, to soul-searching rather than to indignation or resignation, and a reform of the State through new forms of public-private partnership.
David Baverez is a French investor who has been based in Hong Kong since
2012. A graduate of HEC Paris and INSEAD, he is the author of several notable books
on China’s strategy, on the transformation of
global geopolitics and on economic relations between Asia and the West.
Jean-Jacques Pluchart