lifestyle leader

From Philip Stephens' leading FT op-ed on the rise of China:

The big mistake is to assume that the future can be mapped out in linear progression from the present. The Chinese economy has been growing at something close to 10 per cent a year for 30 years. If it continues to expand at that rate it will quite soon overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy. Case closed: Beijing will rule the world.... Nothing, though, is pre-ordained. If there is a lesson to be drawn from the recent past it is that geopolitics does not travel in straight lines.

The well-informed are as determined in pointing this fact out as book publishers are in ignoring it.