How the world will look in 2025

China will become our global powerhouse, the world’s population will hit 8bn, and we’ll have grown used to biblical floods. Richard Fitzpatrick finds out how Earth will look in 12 years.

A SECOND language might be a redundant skill by 2025, as outdated as calligraphy, because of advances in computer translation, say futurologists. Maybe so; Mandarin, however, will be a useful language to know in 12 years’ time, as China’s population is then set to peak at 1.4bn.

“The global economy is tilting towards Asia,” says the Economist magazine, and towards China in particular, as it is set to bypass the United States in 2018 as the globe’s leading economic tiger.