Sharing and mashing up IP without restriction and less regulation could be a serious challenge to competition in the traditional sense.
I think it's fascinating how certain types of products have been targeted for counterfeiting and how far they have spread. When you look at the ever downward pressure on price (and often, inadvertently quality) demanded by customers, I think it might lead to the conditions supporting these practices.
It's definitely a think outside of the box type of exercise, but, look at open source and compare for a minute. Of course there is a huge differences, but I think the things the comparison highlights are of interest to question.
Their model does track energy prices – heading: “CHEAP ENERGY TO DRIVE GROWTH IN THE 2020s” and the impact of climate change – heading: “CLIMATE CHANGE STARTS TO IMPEDE GROWTH IN SOME COUNTRIES” among other things. I presume their model must track demographic shifts globally (it'd be a pretty crap model if it didn't) – heading: “AUSTRALIA RISES TO BECOME ELEVENTH LARGEST ECONOMY AS POPULATION RISES” based on what I'm seeing in the summary.
I don't know how they'd factor in crises such as conflicts and financial meltdowns given that you could make a lot of money if you could forecast such things. I guess they have to adjust their models in the face of new realities. I suppose we have to prefix their report with an "all other things being equal" hedge but they do appear to have taken into account obvious enough factors (energy/climate/population/…) which they can kind of keep track of.
I am not sketical that China has a quickly growing economy, but models that project 20 years into the future often fail to account for black swan events (ex: 9/11, 2008 financial crises, famine/drought, decline in oil price since 2013, etc) that require total model changes. I expect at least 1 of these events in the next 20 years and likely a few. I’m thinking: Environmental crises, Demographics crises in China (too many men, not enough women) Debt crises North Korean crises