Monday, May 16 2005 15:40 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Singapore: China and India's economic emergence will eventually lift them to a world leadership role alongside the United States, former Hong Kong governor and EU commissioner Chris Patten said today (May 16, 2005).

In a keynote speech at a Singapore regional trade show, Patten also said the United States and European Union had no grounds to complain about the surge in Chinese textile exports this year that has raised concerns of a trade war.

"What we are witnessing is the re-emergence of China and India as global heavyweights," said Patten, the British governor of Hong Kong from 1992 until the territory's handover to China in 1997.

"Now we are used to living in a world which has been shaped and led by the trans-Atlantic community -- by America principally, but also Europe and I just think we should sometimes consider how much longer that is going to be true."

Apart from being a major manufacturer, China was also rapidly becoming an important consumer market for the rest of the world, which will only heighten the importance of Beijing on the global stage, Patten said.

"China has become the workshop of the world, it's also a big new market for what the rest of the world produces," Patten said in his speech to open the Tax Free World Association Asia Pacific Conference.

"Within a decade, China will almost certainly become the world's largest exporter and the world's largest importer."