This is a little old, but I just came across a reference to it on the Security Metrics mailing list. Robert X. Cringely writes about a metric to predict emerging global leaders in technology (and presumably economic development and power) that is based on the number of Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts (CCIEs), broken down by country. Cringely writes:

Where I took a step further was to divide the number of CCIEs into each country’s population, then do the same for each country’s Gross Domestic Product and correct for widely varying populations and states of economic development. For a baseline, then, the U.S. has at present 5,863 CCIEs, which is 1.947 CCIEs per 100,000 population and $2.2 billion of GDP per CCIE.

The results for Europe and North America are not surprising, with Canada, the UK, and Ireland being relatively close to the US. What is more interesting are the numbers for Asia.

India has 0.036 CCIEs per 100K to China’s 0.22 per 100K — a 7X differential — while India has $10 billion in GDP per CCIE to China’s $3.3 billion. There is no doubt that there is plenty of network expertise in India, but these numbers show that expertise isn’t making it out of the technology centers to the rest of the country. China, on the other hand, is developing its IT infrastructure much more broadly. This also doesn’t take into account the simply huge numbers coming out of Hong Kong, where there are 3.3 CCIEs per 100K and $1.13 billion in GDP per CCIE — numbers that might properly be added to the rest of China in some accounts.

Japan has 1.23 CCIEs per 100K to South Korea’s 1.9, but the significant difference between these two countries is the $4 billion per CCIE in GDP for Japan compared to $1.28 billion in South Korea, which is clearly investing massively in network infrastructure.

Looking 30 years into the future I think it is clear that the regional leaders will be China and Korea, NOT India and Japan.