TRANSFORMATION AND RESOURCES IN THE "NEW" GEO-ECONOMY

The essay addresses the big changes that took place in the geo-economy of manufacturing as a result of the amazing growth of the Asian economies, especially China’s, over the last three decades. The indicators used in order to assess the extent of the change are the consumption data of 11 industrial raw materials (the 6 main non-ferrous metals: copper, aluminium, lead, zinc, tin and nickel; plus crude steel, rubber, plastic materials, wood-based panels, paper and paperboard) in the G-20 countries. The figures were compared to the data of the evolution of the manufacturing output worldwide to measure the degree of shifting of its center of gravity from North America and Europe towards Asia. Both statistical methods lead to the conclusion that the distribution of the manufacturing output in the world has been changing remarkably in the last 10 to 15 years, moving eastward: while in the year 2000 the United States still held 24.8% of the world output in current dollars, in 2007, though still at the top, its share dropped to 18.2% and in 2010 China ranked first with a 21.7% share. After Japan and Germany, that retain the third and fourth positions respectively among manufacturing producers, India and South Korea rose sharply to the fifth and sixth positions. Italy ranked seventh. At the same time a progressive rise was observed in basic product consumption in industrial processing. The United States, the first world consumer in 9 basic products out of 11 in 1980, lost its record in the use of industrial materials in 2010, replaced by China. As regards Italy, in Europe our country was second after Germany in the use of industrial materials throughout the period from 1980 to 2010.