The year 2011 ended with a lot of global economic and political developments that causes opposite feelings. After the Asian financial crisis 1997 - 1998, the world economic crisis 2008 - 2009, the year 2011 witnessed that the global economy was hard to reach the lower growth rate than expected, the inflation and unemployment was high but local, the financial market was gloomy, the public debts spread out and especially serious in the euro zone, the price of goods and fuel increased... All warned about an economic future 2012 that is not bright due to too many complicated contradictions and a lot of unexpected hot spots of economy - society.
In 2011, the global politics changed significantly with the unforeseen political changes such as instability in North Africa - Middle East, with the nuclear policies full of uncertainties in North Korea or Iran, with increasing stress and not easy to solve in the South China Sea... Among many these changes, one sees the implicated role of the powers as well as the power struggle between the two superpowers USA and China. The global political chessboard is moving complicatedly and very difficult to predict in 2012 when the national leaders in the United States, Russia and China change after the elections or transfer of power.
The book content is presented in four chapters. Chapter I: World economy in 2011 – indicate a general picture of the actual state of development of the world economy in 2011 through the macroeconomic indicators, such as GDP growth rate, inflation, unemployment rate, actual state of development of trade, investment and international finance.
Chapter II: World politics in 2011. In this chapter, the author provided a general picture of the world political situation in 2011, geopolitical collisions, regional conflicts, arms race, non-traditional security, secession and relationship between the big countries in the global political issue.
Chapter III: Economic situation of some countries and region in 2011 – mention to the economies of: USA, China, Russia, European Union, Japan, India and ASEAN.
Chapter IV: World economic and political prospect in 2012 and some policy implications for Vietnam. The author relied on the practical and theoretical basis to give some policy implications to Vietnam to provide foundations to the State to make decision and carry out macro operation.
The book is the result of the Ministerial-level research task implemented by the Institute of World Economics and Politics. The authors not only provided information but also commented, analyzed the events, compared with the previous years, at the same time forecasted the next year so that the readers have a general view of the world in the economic and political angle.
Nguyen Vu
