User:Nebula 2021/sandbox

''21st century

Article Talk Read Edit source View history Watch Tools hide General What links here Related changes Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Get shortened URL Download QR code Wikidata item Edit interlanguage links Expand all Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For other uses, see 21st century (disambiguation). Millennium 3rd millennium Centuries 20th century21st century22nd century Timelines 20th century21st century22nd century State leaders 20th century21st century22nd century Decades 2000s2010s2020s2030s2040s 2050s2060s2070s2080s2090s Categories: Births – Deaths Establishments – Disestablishments vte The 21st century is the current century in the Anno Domini or Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. It began on 1 January 2001 and will end on 31 December 2100. It is the first century of the 3rd millennium.

The rise of a global economy and Third World consumerism marked the beginning of the century, along with increased private enterprise and deepening concern over terrorism after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.[1][2][3] The NATO interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, and the overthrow of several regimes during the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, led to mixed outcomes in the Arab world, resulting in several civil wars and political instability.[4] The United States has remained the sole global superpower while China is now considered an emerging superpower. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine became the largest conventional military offensive in Europe since World War II, resulting in a refugee crisis and disruptions to global trade.

In 2022, 45% of the world's population lived in "some form of democracy", although only 8% lived in "full democracies."[5] The United Nations estimates that by 2050, two thirds of the world's population will be urbanized.

The world economy expanded at high rates from $42 trillion in 2000 to $94 trillion in 2021, though many economies rose at greater levels, some gradually contracted.[a] The European Union greatly expanded in the 21st century, adding 13 member states, but the United Kingdom withdrew. Most EU member states introduced a common currency, the Euro. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was also greatly expanded, adding 11 member states.

Effects of global warming and rising sea levels exacerbated the ecological crises, with eight islands disappearing between 2007 and 2014.[6][7][8]

From January 2020 to May 2023, the COVID-19 pandemic began to rapidly spread worldwide, killing over 15 million people around the globe,[9] and causing severe global economic disruption, including the largest global recession since the Great Depression.

Due to the sudden proliferation of internet-accessible mobile devices, such as smartphones becoming ubiquitous worldwide beginning in the early 2010s, more than half of the world's population obtained access to the Internet by 2018.[10] After the success of the Human Genome Project, DNA sequencing services became available and affordable.[11][12]

Pronunciation There is a lack of general agreement over how to pronounce specific years of the 21st century in English. Academics have pointed out that the early years of previous centuries were commonly pronounced as, for example, "eighteen oh five" (for 1805) and "nineteen oh five" (for 1905).[13] Generally, the early years of the 21st century were pronounced as in "two-thousand (and) five," with a change taking place around 2010, when pronunciations often shifted between the early-years form of "two-thousand and ten" and the traditionally more concise form of "twenty-ten."

The Vancouver Olympics, which took place in 2010, was being officially referred to by Vancouver 2010 as "the twenty-ten Olympics".[further explanation needed]

Society

Shanghai has become a symbol of the recent economic boom of China. Advances in technology such as ultrasound, prenatal genetic testing and genetic engineering are modifying the demographics and has the potential to change the genetic makeup of the human population. Because of sex-selective abortion, fewer girls have been born in the 21st century (and since the early 1980s) compared to past centuries, mostly because of son preference in East and South Asia. In 2014, only 47 percent of Indian births were of girls.[14] This has led to an increase in bachelors in countries such as China and India. The first genetically modified children were born in November 2018 in China, beginning a new biological era for the human species and raising great controversy.