Chapter 1 - The Rise of the Rest

The main purpose of this chapter is to familiarize the readers with the background of America as a super power. In this chapter Fareed explains that after the fall of the Soviet Union, we entered a very unipolar world, where the United States of America was the supreme power in almost every aspect. However, a shift in power started to occur due to the rise of the Asian economies and slowly many all-American icons became very universal and many of such categories went global.

Fareed tries to address the question of how this shift happened. This is not about the fall of America, rather the story of everyone else's rise and growth.
To answer his question and prove his point, he refers to how in the last decade, many of the poor nations have grown at a rate of 4 percent or more. Many of these countries are in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Thier growth has led to a shift which I will now outline in point form:

1- Tallest building in world is built in Taipei, which will soon be overtaken by Burj Dubai
2- The world's richest man is from Mexico
3- The largest publicly traded company is in China
4- The world's biggest plane is built in Russia and Ukraine
5- The largest factories are in China
6- London is becoming the leading financial centre
7- Biggest movie industry is now in Bollywood, India

The list goes on and on about many all-American icons that have shifted overseas. Only a decade ago, America was at the top of many of such categories.

The key concept that we need to understand about this chapter is that globalization is happening at a very fast rate, whether people like it or not. In order to stay on par, we need to adjust our behavior and take advantage of the opportunities or we can end up losing everything. A century ago when automobiles were introduced, they revolutionized trade but giving the farmers the ability to trade their goods not only in their own town but also at the neighboring cities.
Now a century later globalization has revolutionized trade. From Canada you can have an internet video conference with your partner in Japan and a buyer's agent in Iran, to ship goods from your factory in China, where raw material are supplied from India, to Saudi Arabia. This involves many countries and leads to lower costs for the producers, and jobs for many people in the developing countries.

The one issue that I think Fareed takes for granted is the fact that the United States is still way ahead of many developing countries in terms of infrastructure and investment. Even though the developing countries are growing at a rapid rate, they are still far from being where the United States is and this process may take a few more decades. In my opinion tall buildings or large shopping malls are not very reliable indicators of a country's economy, education level, or infrastructure. From my experience at United Nations, there are over one hundred indicators which combined together can be a relatively good measure of how a country is functioning.

In this first chapter of the book, I think Fareed is trying to familiarize the readers with a little bit of a background of the ever shifting global economy and I think he does good job simplifying that.