An Asian Century Is A Long Way Off

In 2019, when I started writing my book Has Asia Lost It? Dynamic Past, Turbulent Future, none of the following events had yet occurred – a deadly pandemic which caused serious public health and economic damage; a surge in protests in Hongkong, Thailand, India and Myanmar; and the emergence of an all-powerful surveillance state in democracies and one-party dictatorships alike. Multiply this with pre-Covid-19 trends such as stalling social mobility, rising inequality, and a globalization-driven growth model under attack. The inescapable conclusion: There is something wrong with popular perceptions about Asia’s dynamism and its future place in the world.

The simple fact is that the Asian miracle is stalling in developing Asia, a vast swathe of the continent which includes China, India, South Asia and most of Southeast Asia. The rhetoric about a rising, shining Asia is running far ahead of reality and the next 25 years are going to be incredibly challenging for policymakers as they grapple with rising societal expectations at a time of diminishing economic opportunities.

What is impeding Asia’s fabled future? There are four principal reasons:

First, the high rates of economic growth which Asia has witnessed in the past decades cannot continue forever. Even economics must obey the law of gravity. Yet major multilateral and private-sector institutions continue to talk up Asia’s ability to sustain high growth rates well into the future. If there is one thing to be learned about economists by now, it is that they almost always get short-term and long-term forecasts wrong. So, as a start, we should stop paying attention to the predictions and assume that Asia’s pole position in the global economy is not guaranteed.

All these factors are compounded by messy geopolitics. Asia’s dynamism in recent decades has unfortunately bestowed upon it too many contenders for regional supremacy. The US-China relationship, which is a tussle between an incumbent superpower and a rising one, will be the defining feature for the next decade. The original Asian miracle in the 1960s and 1970s happened due to a combination of American benevolence (by providing a security blanket and access to the US market) and a progressive leadership who capitalized on the early promise of globalization and the liberalization of trade and investment. The profound challenge before the region is to ensure that China’s rise and America’s dominance are calibrated in such a way that their chemistry does not lead to disruption or explosive conflict.

The collateral damage will be the citizens of Asia, particularly young people. Consider the impact that the Asian miracle has already had on disadvantaged teenage girls, many victims of the ills of countries that have experienced rapid progress but have lacked the capacity to ensure human security – trafficking and slavery, sexual abuse, and social strictures which prevent hundreds of millions of them from educating themselves and seizing economic opportunity, just as their male counterparts have done. Notwithstanding all the hoopla about this being the Asian Century, the region cannot seriously consider itself worthy of admiration when gender rights and opportunity are suppressed on a massive scale. A sequel to the Asian miracle is still possible but that would depend on the region going back to the basics and learning lessons from what made the first one so durable and successful.