Do you think China has replaced the United States as the world's leading superpower?

A recent Pew Research Center Poll indicates 46 percent of us believe that is the case, or will be the case.

Wednesday night as part of this week's Texas A&M Memorial Student Center grand re-opening activities, two national experts weighed in on emerging economic powers, including China, India, Russia, and Brazil.

Steve Forbes, CEO of Forbes Media, and economist Robert Reich, who served as Labor Secretary in the Clinton Administration, were the guest speakers.

They discussed how America should respond to these changes, even from countries like Germany.

Reich told the audience, "What Germany does with manufacturing, it creates precision manufacturing, it does it so well, at such a high level, it generates so much value, nobody else can do it as well. It justifies those high wages"

Forbes asked, "So why did the surge happen? The end of the Cold War made it possible for globalization to hit countries that had never done it before. You saw it in China, realized it was falling behind. They made changes in the 70s and early 80s, India in the early 90s made changes, eastern and central Europe, fall of Communism, they adopted supply side economics."

Wednesday night's program was part of the MSC Wiley Lecture Series at A&M.