by Fareed Zakaria.

Norton. 288 pages. $25.95.

BY SAM COALE
Special to the Journal

Two years ago in a cramped villa in Beirut, I stumbled upon a TV documentary on the seven voyages of the Chinese admiral, Zheng He, in 1405. The new emperor banned such voyages, thus isolating China for years as the West colonized the world. That has stuck in my mind as another instance of globalization: a Chinese tale on Lebanese TV watched by an American on a lecture tour.

Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International who writes a weekly column on international relations and is a frequent talking head on the Sunday morning TV shows, has written a fascinating book on the rise of China and India in the 21st century with what will become a famous opening line: “This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else.”

Globalization works. China’s economic growth rate is the fastest in recorded history. It’s the world’s largest producer of coal, steel and cement and manufactures two-thirds of the world’s photocopiers, microwave ovens and DVD players. Imbued with Confucian tactics, it views the world “as a set of interacting forces, complexly interrelated rather than working through a simple and linear cause and effect.”

India has more self-made billionaires than any other country. Its messy, free-market, frequently corrupt economy often reflects ours, and its Hindu sense of tolerance encompasses all ambiguities, even though 40 percent of the world’s poor live there.

Zakaria dazzles with statistics, comparisons, geography, and cultural glimpses to show the rise of non-Western nations. In this century, three of the four biggest economies will be Japan, China and India. Western suits for men monopolize the workplace. In the time it took for the environmental review process of Heathrow’s Terminal Five, the entire Beijing Airport, larger than all of Heathrow, was built. Are “Modern” and “Western” synonymous? Time will tell.

Think of tennis: in 1970, America, Britain and Australia dominated the sport: “In 2007, the final-sixteen players came from ten different countries.”

Of course there are downsides, such as pollution from 9,000 chemical plants on the Yangtze River alone. And social upheavals that cry out for a determined nationalism.

Zakaria is fascinated by “robust growth” and believes that “culture follows power,” which is a product of free markets, not empire. One of his heroes is Margaret Thatcher. He upbraids Oxfordians for studying Greek and Latin when they should have been studying chemistry. His view strikes me as pinched, however accurate, as quantity trumps all else.

But he’s right on the money with the United States, which he celebrates as “the first universal nation” that attracts all comers but that is now paralyzed by “a highly dysfunctional politics [with our] ceaseless, virulent debate about trivia.” The fear-mongering politicians and the disastrous Iraq war have decimated our influence and image. We will succeed because of our openness and flexibility, but we need “consultation, cooperation, and even compromise” with others. Our task’s tough but doable, if we’d only figure it out soon. THE POST-AMERICAN WORLD,

samcoale@cox.net