Dambisa Moyo: 'The world will be drawn into a war for resources'

Decca Aitkenhead in the Guardian (UK): Massive geopolitical shifts seldom announce themselves with a bang. They tend instead to creep up slowly, until it's hard to be sure exactly when they began. I remember going to buy some steel about six years ago, and being staggered by the price. "Ah," the man in the hardware store explained, "it's the Chinese, you see. They're buying up so much steel, the price has gone through the roof."
....These sort of random, disconnected events look neither random nor disconnected once you read Dambisa Moyo's account of what's happening to the world's commodities...  Moyo writes, "in less than 20 years we will witness the creation of a middle class of roughly the same size as the current total population of Africa, North America and Europe." Naturally, they will want mobile phones, fridges, cars and washing machines; 2,000 new cars already join Beijing's streets every day. In 2010 China had 40 cities with populations of more than a million; by 2020 it plans to have added another 225. The implications for the world's commodity resources are stark and sobering: global demand for food and water is expected to increase by 50% and 30% respectively by 2030, the pressure on copper, lead, zinc and corn is already becoming unsustainable, and no one has a clue where the energy we'll need is going to come from.

If Moyo's calculations are correct, we are in big trouble – which makes the central premise of her book, Winner Takes All, all the more arresting. Governments across the world, she writes, have singularly failed to grasp what's coming – with one sensational exception. "Simply put, the Chinese are on a global shopping spree."

... But when the resources begin to run dry, the consequences will be catastrophic. Already, since 1990 at least 18 violent conflicts worldwide have been triggered by competition for resources. If nothing is done now, warns Moyo, commodity wars on a terrifying scale are all but inevitable.

To western eyes, Winner Take All makes for scary reading. Viewed through Chinese eyes, on the other hand, it's an altogether different story. For all its premonitions of armageddon, the book's tone feels more congratulatory than cautionary – reflecting the particular perspective of its author....