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According to a 2017 study by the Brookings Institution, 88 percent of the next 1 billion people to enter the middle class globally will be Asians. The size of the Asian middle class is expected to reach nearly 3.5 billion people, or 65 percent of the world’s total, by 2030, a dramatic increase from 1.4 billion in 2015…Brookings figures that in 2015, newly wealthy consumers in China and India already outspent their American counterparts, accounting for a combined 17 percent of consumption by the global middle class compared to 13 percent for the U.S. That gap will continue to widen. By 2030, the middle class in China and India will spend 39 percent of the global total; the U.S. will account for just 7 percent. ~ Michael Schuman, US News & World Report, January 2018

By Catherine Austin Fitts

The rise of the Asian consumer will have a powerful impact on your life, work, investments, and community for years to come.

Asian growth is driving many current trends, from the rise of megacities, to the heated competition to produce self-driving cars, to wild swings and mergers and acquisitions in pork, wine, and other agricultural markets, and to scores of Western schools adding Mandarin to their curriculum. It is also inspiring fierce competition in currency and financial markets, leadership in technology and space, and growing trade wars.

The goal of our 2nd Quarter 2018 Wrap Up is to help you understand what is happening and to inspire you to anticipate what it can and will mean to you. I will look at the impact on economics, financial markets, geopolitics, and consumer products as well as local communities– as scores of successful Asians and their children study, invest, work, and immigrate globally.

I knew how important this trend was before I started to write the 2nd Quarter 2018 Wrap Up. Having spent the last few months studying it in depth, I appreciate what a complex, fascinating topic it is – and how valuable it will be for you to navigate the changes underway.

Make sure to check out the 2nd Quarter 2018 Wrap Up web presentation. We have an excellent list of movies and documentaries. My bibliography will publish on July 27th with the audio presentation. The written presentation will follow next week.

In Let’s Go to the Movies, I will review Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware.

The most innovative computer hardware is being developed, traded, and used in the city of Shenzhen, a special economic zone in Southern China that forms part of the Pearl River Delta megalopolis immediately north of Hong Kong. Computer makers and software developers from all over the world come to Shenzhen to take an advantage of the fast turnaround of their ideas, and the unlimited pool of tech know-how and electronic components. An open-source philosophy prevalent in the Shenzhen IT world directly opposes the US companies’ policy of protection of intellectual property.

There will be no Money & Markets this coming week as this week is the last of the month. Post your questions and stories for the following week here – I will be speaking with you from Zurich, Switzerland.

Talk to you Thursday!

37 Comments

      1. Interesting, so Jim Rogers was right all along to move to Singapore and teach his daughters Mandarin?

  2. Catherine……Masterful commentary throughout the whole Wrap-up! a few comments on Macron of France…the people could not wait to bring him in, and I am wondering who really voted for him. The women? Seeing a good looking, John F. Kennedy type with a fantasy older woman-younger man story? My own sex is sometimes it’s own worse enemy. Certainly not those who own businesses and property. His comments about his country prove his inability to lead it anywhere. I am of French descent on my father’s side; and it is a shame to go and see what is happening with the ‘takeover’.

  3. Moore’s law noun, often capitalized L
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    Definition of Moore’s law

    : an axiom of microprocessor development usually holding that processing power doubles about every 18 months especially relative to cost or size

  4. My husband was a PUD commissioner, on the board of WPPS and the BPA in the 1980’s. His Grandfather was the Chelan County PUD at it’s inceptionin the late 19th century.

    In 1984 the Chelan County PUD hosted a delegation of Chinese, which included the Minister of Energy. The local Chelan County PUD officials were ordered to give the Chinese our Hydroelectric technology. The delegation was in the area for several weeks.

    Everyone on the Commission was somewhat mystified by the Federal government giving away our technology.
    To be honest , I was unreasonably upset about this. In retrospect I understand why.

    As a female I was required not to look the Chinese males in the eye. In fact, I was instructed to not to look at them at all I was told to look down demurly. I took no small amount of grief for refusing.

    I’m fairly certain watching the “miracle” of China’s rise, we in Chelan County were not the only ones ordered to give technology to the Chinese.

  5. I decided to stop watching the Kavanaugh hearings and decided to contribute to something real.

    This is a wrap up I am going to listen to 3 or 4 more times. Just brilliant.

    Working in the fashion industry there’s an intimate relationship with China due to so much manufacturing that is done in all of Asia. Here are some trends I like to contribute:

    At its peek in the 80’s, Prato, Italy had over 40,000 textile mills. Today there’s less than 4,000 and that number is from 5 years ago. It’s properly less due to shipping textile manufacturing to China.

    Yes, the Chinese do steal intellectual property. They are known in the industry as excellent copiers. Most of the Italian mills got sick of being copied and opened factories in China. As more asian students go to design schools in the US and Europe this will change. I thought long and hard about this, the only thing that will save america and Europe is our/their culture. That is something they don’t have. Yes, students can learn Bach and organ playing but I am talking about the ethnic culture that makes each European country unique to them. What’s really interesting lately Italian designers talking about the beauty, tradition, and culture of Italy. It’s that higher connection to the Italian artistic side that makes them unique and they are promoting it. More than the French fashion houses interestingly enough. Obviously due to the politics of the day. It has been more than one designer from different brands talking and promoting the same thing that I picked up on and my gut is telling me its in connection to the rise of Asia. It’s easy for the Italians to do. Their culture is awesome. They have a lot to be proud of. Sadly, the French are sucked in the whole global crap. French citizens know its killing them but corporations like LVMH are on the global path. I saw your tweet on Hermes and Hermes is in a category of its own. Hermes is brand of the elites.

    I know you just released your interview with Dr. Farrell on his new book and that’s ANOTHER topic I can contribute to going through art school in the 90s. I didn’t see the mind control in my 20’s but boy I see it now. Catherine, go to the Village today and you will be horrified. I feel for these kids. It is really ugly. I digress.

    10 years ago, the couture market of luxury brands was considered a dying industry used to only promote perfume and accessories for luxury brands. This past season it went from 5 fashion shows to 15 which doesn’t sound like a lot but for dresses that cost anywhere from $20-100,000 its a lot. Again, my gut is saying the asians.

    The fashion calendar for fashions and market starts in NY and ends in Paris. This year Tommy Hilfiger did his fashion show in Shanghai at the start of fashion week here in NYC. Mulberry a traditional British brand, also did theirs in China ahead of the London fashion week.

    The American designer Michael Kors has 6 stores in India and I don’t think any other designer has that many stores including the European big brands. He got a jump in India.

    all signs are point to the east and it’s really interesting.

    1. Yes. EXCELLENT COMMENTS. And the growth will be explosive. Excellence in fashion and beauty is only going to grow more valuable. This is why Macron is off his rocker when he says there is no such thing as French culture or a Frenchman It is like blowing up a gold mine. You would have to be insane to destroy your most valuable asset.

      1. When I lived in Paris in 2001-2002 a person living in France had to follow the French motto, Liberté, égalité, fraternité. At that time, they were not open to muslim women wearing hijabs. Living in Paris there was a pride of being French. The last time I was in Paris was 5 years ago and I was shocked. I felt the French identity was lost. Williamsburg is a very trendy part of Brooklyn where the hipsters hang and parts of Paris had that very same vibe. A LOT of English written everywhere. Donuts in the Mache du Puce…! I couldn’t believe it. There has to be contrast between the country sides of France and the big cities. There’s no way all of France is falling down this hole.

        They are going to blow up their greatest asset and I truly believe it will be the 2nd French Revolution.

  6. Listening to this was a paradigm shifting experience for me. It’s as if the top of my head was peeled open, and ideas and realities the size of aircraft carriers were compacted into my cranium . I went through a whole range of emotions as I sat here… from realization and Epiphany , to depression and terror!! Then, the man in me said, Duane, get up off your sniveling ass and deal with this shit head on! This isn’t the time to be paralyzed by fear, laziness, or apathy. Its time to ACT.
    I’ll tell you watch Catherine, I think I’ve studied every word you’ve written or spoken over these last 19 years, and this report is at the top !
    Thank you so much…?

  7. Catherine,

    I saw this 2013 article on the South China Sea and the conflict between the Philippines and China some time ago. I’m sure you’ve seen it already but just sharing.

    http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/10/27/south-china-sea/index.html

    The last paragraph of the article had left an impression on me since reading it:

    “You’ve got the wrong science-fiction movie,” one former highly placed U.S. official later told me, when I described what we saw at Subi, and what it might mean for the guys on Ayungin. “It’s not the Death Star. It’s actually the Borg from ‘Star Trek’: ‘You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.’ ” The scholar Huang Jing put it another, more organic way. “The Chinese expand like a forest, very slowly,” he said. “But once they get there, they never leave.”

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