Futuríveis

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"Lisboa é uma mega-região mundial"
Existem 191 países no mundo, mas apenas 40 mega-regiões - territórios que abarcam um quinto da população, dois terços da produção da economia global e 85% da inovação. Lisboa (e a mancha litoral até à Corunha) é uma delas. Entre 50% a 60% dos seus profissionais integram a denominada classe criativa-conjunto de profissionais cuja função é gerar novas ideias, tecnologias e novos conteúdos ou solucionar problemas complexos. Encaixam-se neste critério não apenas cientistas, engenheiros e artistas, mas também profissionais da gestão, das finanças, do direito, da saúde. Já Portugal, coma país, está em último lugar no índice Global da Classe Criativa (IGCC): tem apenas 13,4% de profissionais "criativos", contrastando com países como Irlanda, Finlândia, Reina Unido, Holanda e Bélgica, com mais de 26% neste índice. Portugal é, aliás, o único país europeu que nos últimos anos, registou um crescimento negativo no número de profissionais criativos, diz Richard Florida, com base no seu estudo "Europe in the Creative Age".
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Jornal de Negócios

..."The Olympic torch’s journey to the Beijing Olympics is threatening to turn from triumphal progress into marathon humiliation. Protesters are rushing like moths to the Olympic flame.

The lighting of the torch in Athens was awkward enough. It took arrests and heavy-handed policing to keep pro-Tibet demonstrators at bay. Things could get worse this weekend, when the torch will reach London to be greeted by a combustible mix of police, demonstrators and patriotic Chinese students. Other potential trouble spots on the route to the Olympic opening ceremony in August include San Francisco and New Delhi. Then there is the trip across Tibet itself. The one spot on the Olympic torch’s progress where we can be guaranteed that there will be no public demonstrations is Pyongyang.

Is the Chinese government beginning to regret its triumph in securing the Olympics for Beijing? The games were meant to be a coming-out party for modern China – playing a similar role to that of the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 and the Seoul Olympics of 1988.

Unfortunately for China, the analogy that increasingly springs to mind is not Tokyo or Seoul – but the Berlin Olympics of 1936. This is not to say that the Chinese government are modern-day Nazis. Any such comparison is grotesque.

The Berlin and Beijing games are comparable for other reasons. China – like Germany in the 1930s – is an emerging superpower. Within 20 years it is likely to be the largest economy in the world. The rise of China – like the rise of Germany in the 1930s – is reshaping the world system. So the comparisons with the Tokyo and Seoul Olympics do not really capture the political impact of the Beijing games. The new China is far more than just the latest and largest Asian tiger economy.

The Beijing Olympics will be stuffed with political symbolism."
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Gideon Rachman, Financial Times

Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems.