The world in 10 years: What 2032 will look like

 Don't fret over conflict with China, says lan Bremmer. Worry about a developing-world debt crisis.

- lan Bremmer

As we advance deeper into our crisis-plagued 21st century, East-West conflict is driving headlines. But a closer look reveals that tensions between the West and the Global South, which broadly includes regions in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific, will pose the most important threats and challenges over the next decade.

The received wisdom is that the next superpower conflict will pit America against China. But there is not, and will not be, a global cold war between the two countries.

That is because their 21st-century interdependence will not be undone by 20th-century threats.

It's true that trust between Washington and Beijing is in short supply. But there remains a consensus within America's government that the country still needs China to succeed. America's closest allies in Europe, Asia and the Americas want absolutely no part of a great-power conflict.

Trade with China is too important to their futures.

A dangerously destabilised China would create mutually assured economic destruction.

China remains America's largest trading partner in goods, its largest supplier of goods imports and its third-largest export market.

America remains both China's largest goods-trade partner and its biggest export market. And Mr Xi Jinping knows that the Communist Party's monopoly on domestic political power depends on continuing to meet the expectations of China's people. To keep living standards rising, Beijing needs to sustain robust commercial relations with the EU, America and Japan, which together buy nearly 40 per cent of China's exports.