China, India won't dominate the 21st century global economy

As well, they spoke of the "resilience" of developed countries to continue to strongly influence the international economy.

"Relatively speaking there will be a much bigger role for India and China and other emerging markets."

said Dr. Kevin W. Lu, Director and Chief Financial Officer of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, The World Bank Group.

"I view this as more of a wider participatory role, rather than dominance by say China."

"However, you must not underestimate the resilience of the economies of the developed world, in terms of economic and political resilience," Lu continued.

"In the US, you can feel a sense of energy with the [Barak] Obama transition... The democratic system has its strengths - these economies have very strong backbones."

Adding to this point, Roberto Teixera da Costa, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Banco Itau Financeira S.A. in Brazil, said that commentators are

"doing a post mortem on the United States and on capitalism. But the United States has all the instruments and energy to recoup its position in the world."

Brij Raj Singh, CEO of Baer Capital Partners Ltd., said that in the evolving new economic order, "You won't have emerging markets taking over. Rather, they will be playing a larger role."

However, panellists did draw a sharp distinction between emerging and developed economies in terms of how they will come out of the current crisis.

In particular, Lu noted that the Chinese leadership has a lot of cards to play, given its $2 trillion foreign reserves and tremendous infrastructure needs, while the United States will have to borrow heavily to fund its stimulus programme, which won't be meeting any "legitimate demand".

As well, in China, living standards on an absolute level are still very low, alongside growing domestic consumption, which provides a lot of upside potential, "unlike in the United States, which is leaving the world of easy money, so how much further can it go?"

The panellists also noted the opportunities represented by growing middle classes in the emerging economies.

Singh said India has 300 million people in the middle class and this large group of consumers is driving down costs by enabling companies to earn strong profits from the enormous volumes afforded them in India.

Lu said that there is a "lot of excitement among the middle class. Not only have they grown tremendously in the last 10 years, but their improvement has not been a marginal improvement. For the first time they are buying cars and owning real estate."

The panellists were encouraged by the recent G20 meeting, a "recognition that the world has changed," Teixera da Costa said. Lu added that having more countries sitting at the table "hopefully would make it a more equitable table," and said it was significant that the emergent stakeholders such as China and the Middle East were "invited to the table; they did not push to get there."

Asked about which emerging economies could face systemic problems in the wake of the current crisis, Eastern European countries such as Ukraine and Hungary were mentioned, as were Argentina and Ecuador in Latin America.