A. Why might the development of a nation's domestic economy cause a transformation in the world economy? In the most basic terms, any nation's domestic economy is one (predominantly geographical) sector of the world economy, so the development of its economy automatically implies some change in the overall world economy. If the country involved is a large one, or its economic development is extraordinary, the impact of that development on the world economy will be proportionately greater.
However, this merely statistical interpretation is somewhat reductionist. The world economy is not only the arithmetic sum total of national economies, it is also the product of the interaction of those economies. In particular, nations engage in trade with one another. Their patterns of trade reflect a host of economic specializations, just as any local economy comprises a host of exchanges of specialized goods and services.
Thus, one nation may have a competitive advantage in agricultural products, another in heavy industrial goods, and yet another in financial services. The patterns of trade, at any given time, reflect these specializations and advantages, and tend to reinforce them. If you are carmaker to the world, continued investment in auto plants is a more natural course of action than investment in other products in which other economies have leadership.
However, the development of a national economy is rarely linear and proportional. As it grows, some sectors may actually decline while others undergo startling expansion. That economy now has a different "basket" of products that it can offer advantageously on the world market. While that nation's economic growth may be advantageous for the world as a whole (more goods are available for consumers), the patterns of world trade may shift to the detriment of other individual national economies. Thus, the explosive growth of the Japanese auto industry in the 1970s was...