2016 Ended: Saying Goodbye To A Roller-Coaster Year
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Andrei Akulov via Strategic-Culture.org,
The year 2016 was a time of numerous major events providing no clue to what the world will be like in the 21st century. It could be anything – from plunging into devastating wars and economic downturns to unheard of prosperity and stability leaving the present turmoil in the past. There is no clear trend of global development and it’s impossible to say where the world is heading to. At least, not at the threshold of 2017.
The importance of information grew exponentially. 2016 will be remembered as a year of information wars. This factor is becoming increasingly instrumental in international affairs. No information sources are fully trusted anymore but the influence of media outlets and social networks is immense as the US electoral campaign showed.
Internet has become a battlefield where information wars are waged to influence large masses of people and a considerable number of world leaders. A media outlet has become the most powerful weapon used by a “warring side?.
Geopolitical instability was increasing. There were geopolitical uncertainties, such as Brexit, the slowdown of China’s economic development to affect the global economic situation, and slow-moving trends in demographics and productivity growth.
2016 will be remembered as the year of the fourth industrial revolution – a phenomenon expected to change the world as we know it today. It started with consequences unknown. Despite rapid changes in technology, greater productivity, and the progress in labor force skills, the global economy was going through another year of stagnation. Internet, nanotechnology, bioscience, electronics, photonics, advanced materials and renewable energies have so far failed to produce a qualitative leap in the lives of many ordinary people, with social problems remaining as acute as ever.
And so far nothing gives ground to say 2017 will be the year of rapid economic growth. The ongoing political and economic uncertainties around the world are expected to negatively affect the fourth industrial revolution. At least, that’s what it was like in the year that’s gone.
In 2016, the China-offered Free Trade Area of Asia-Pacific was launched while the US-initiated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has a slim chance to ever come to fruition. The China’s sponsored Asian Development Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development started to sponsor the new Silk Road plan. If successful, these two projects can change the economic map of the contemporary world to benefit many other states and damage the US in terms of global standing.
The Silk Road Economic Belt will connect China with Central Asia, Russia and the Baltic countries in Europe; with the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea through Central Asia and West Asia; and with Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Indian Ocean. The Maritime Silk Road, meanwhile, will link China’s coast to Europe through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean in one route, and from China’s coast through the South China Sea to the South Pacific in the other. 2016 …read more
Source: 2016 Ended: Saying Goodbye To A Roller-Coaster Year
