We must not allow our foreign policy to be captured by ideological cliques, partisan political factions, cabals of businesspeople with their own commercial agendas, or foreign powers exerting pressure and seeking to extort us.

Listen to this article 18 min Listen to this article 18 min This is an edited version of Mcebisi Jonas's address to the Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation's winter seminar on growth and transformation.

The ground is shifting under us and South Africa, like every other modern economy, needs to be agile to deal with systemic and emerging challenges.

The expression "May you live in interesting times" is an ancient Chinese curse. I'm sure that we join the global community in wishing for more boring times.

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What we are seeing right now are fundamental changes in global relations as the global economy rebalances away from the historic Western core. China's emergence, closely followed by India, presents an opportunity for a more diverse world order, one without a single pole of global power. The frictions and tensions built up over decades under the old order have begun to trigger political, military and macroeconomic crises.

The early developmental states - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia - paved the way for change. But the sheer size of China and India (accounting for one-third of the global population) entails a much bigger global transformation.

Global growth is now tilted decisively towards Asia and other emerging...