In just four decades, China’s economy has achieved an unprecedented level of wealth and development, and, until recently, its upward trajectory of economic growth and prosperity seemed set to continue.

When Xi Jinping promised the world’s movers and shakers in January 2017 that China would champion globalisation, it looked as if the baton of global economic leadership was being picked up seamlessly by Beijing as Donald Trump prepared to usher in an era of American isolationism.Almost five years later a new world order has emerged, but it is not the one China’s president and others gathered in Davos that day seemed to have in mind.Instead of a continuation of the post-cold war era of growth

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the 11 September, terrorist attacks on the United States (US).

For most people, globalisation has for decades been another name for across-the-board liberalisation. Starting mainly in the 1980s, governments allowed goods, services, capital, and data to move across borders, with few controls. Market capitalism triumphed, and its economic rules applied worldwide. As the title of Branko Milanovic’s latest book correctly states, capitalism was finally alone.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated a wide range of inequalities. If leaders are serious about “building back better,” policies to overcome the systemic forces that underlie them must form the heart of their agendas.One such divide is the gender gap.

Donald Trump has left the White House, but Trumpism has not left United States (US) politics. With Joe Biden as America’s president, the world hopes that the US will shift away from Trump’s disruptive confrontational approach toward China relations and embark on a path of pragmatic engagement. At stake is whether this crucial bilateral relationship serves to strengthen or shatter the global order.

The COVID-19 pandemic underscores just how tightly interwoven humanity has become. A single infected animal somewhere in China set in motion a chain reaction with effects that, nearly a year later, are still reverberating in every corner of the planet. This should not be particularly surprising. The history of pandemics tracks our unification as a species. The Black Death travelled on new trade routes forged between Europe and Asia in the Middle Ages.

There is no single future until it happens, and any effort to envision geopolitics in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic must include a range of possible futures. I suggest five plausible futures in 2030, but obviously others can be imagined.The End Of The Globalised Liberal OrderThe world order established by the United States (US) after World War II created a framework of institutions that led to a remarkable liberalisation of international trade and finance.

In 1988, Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, made a speech in Bruges, Belgium. She summarised her views in a related magazine interview in which she said “They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first.

It is clear that big changes will occur in the hospitality industry within the next 10 years, and these shifts will be largely the result of globalisation. The globalisation of trade and the economy has directly impacted the price of travel.