Paper tiger in Washington: fiery dragon in the Pacific

With the end of the cold war in 1989 and the subsequent decline of Russia as a serious immediate contender, as well as the decline during the 1990s of the hype of Japan as 1, two other regions, states and powers came into contention. One is the United States whose fortunes and prospects seemed to have declined after 1970 but recovered in the 1990s; and even so it is a Paper Tiger. The other is East Asia, despite its post 1997 crisis, and especially China -the Fiery Dragon-. This article analyzes the economic and geopolitical keys that orient the strategies of both contenders. The examination of the world economy and of the predominant place in it of the East Asian points to the most fundamental bases of contemporary economic developments in the region and also presages important world economic ones for the foreseeable future.