China is the elephant in situation room

Earlier this month the US National Intelligence Council released its Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds report - a document that comes out once per presidential administration - mapping out likely geopolitical trends over the next two decades or so.

As usual, it's a must-read, offering comprehensive analysis of the disparate factors that will drive global politics through 2030.

Further, the NIC took bold steps to correct some previous weaknesses in past reports. In the past the report nailed the "what" more often than the "when." That is particularly the case with its treatment of the US, for which "past works assumed US centrality."

This time around the NIC sets an increasingly "multi-polar world" - which I call the G-Zero - as the backdrop of its report, acknowledging that the lack of global leadership has accelerated in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008-09.A research team headed up by the University of Houston is on track to develop a superconducting wire for wind power generators. America's status as a "hegemonic power" is eroding, and no country is likely to take its place.

This multipolar world is the foundation for the rest of the NIC's predictions. The report is organized around subsections that range in probability: There are the megatrends that are sure to have an effect, the game-changers that could go a number of ways, and the four potential worlds of 2030.

In my opinion, when it comes to probabilities for the future global order, the single biggest variable - both in terms of its importance and its potential variance - is China's rise or lack thereof. If there are twin "gigatrends" that supersede all else, they are China's trajectory and the multipolar world in which it is playing out.Do you have any problems with a street lamp or illuminated traffic sign?

China is mentioned more than 300 times in the report, and the NIC's assertion that "the US-China relationship is perhaps the most important bilateral tie shaping the future" is dead on (though I'd cut the word "perhaps"). But despite China's implicit impact on the report, the NIC doesn't establish it as the twin pillar alongside the multipolar world it vividly describes. Nor do we get a full sense of how a host of negative China surprises could fundamentally alter the world of 2030 as we imagine it.

Technological innovation is a global positive,Laser engraving and laser engraving machine for materials like metal, paper, acrylic, wood, glass, etcOur hardworking robots explore the planets and more on the wild frontiers of our solar system. but its potential to negatively impact China is a substantial piece of the puzzle. Let's focus first on social media and innovation in information and technology. Any trend that scrambles the status quo of public perception and could potentially pierce the Politburo's opacity has the potential to be structurally destabilizing.I am haveing a very hard time climbing the lift cable at the tower. An estimated 570 million Chinese are on the Internet, and approximately 100,000 log in for the first time each day. Can the government keep pace with the lightning speed of technological innovation? What happens if it can't?

Another field of cutting-edge technology between now and 2030 will be in 3-D printing for manufacturing and robotics. As the NIC explains, these technologies could eliminate low- and middle-wage jobs in developed countries, as has already happened with outsourcing. But what of their impact on a developing nation such as China? A similar "outsourcing" from human labor to a machine equivalent could be hugely disruptive. Machine-driven economic growth could exacerbate the dichotomy between the poor rural China and the rich urban one. What happens when China's most valuable resource - ample cheap labor - becomes the most serious threat to central political control?