This talk-debate was organized by Aspen Institute Italia to mark the recent publication in Italy (by EGEA) of Kishore Mahbubani’s book entitled The New Asian Hemisphere. During the event, it was observed that with Asia growing at a phenomenal pace, the continent is set to be the key economic player of the next century, yet at the same time it has still to find a stable footing within the international economic and political order. The onus will be on the West to take this opportunity to strengthen cooperation and partnership ties with a continent experiencing such rapid expansion and growth.
The return of Asia to the world stage rests on what the author describes as seven pillars of Western wisdom, namely: free-market economics, science and technology, meritocracy, pragmatism, a culture of peace, rule of law, and education. It is the bringing together of these seven key precepts that has given rise to Asia’s “moment of historical triumph”, which would seem to offer the United States and Europe an opportunity for partnership and cooperation. It was noted, however, that while new opportunities for business look set to grow, in order to benefit from this favorable circumstance the West needs to approach these opportunities with a fresh attitude. It must also leave behind widely-held fears of Asia’s rising power.
It was stressed that any discussion of Asia’s great surge – with growth last year reaching 9% in China, 8% in India and 6% in Indonesia – should not overlook the fact that the continent’s middle class currently comprises some 500 million people, a little over the population of Europe, while by 2020 it will number 1.75 billion people, who will come into the market demanding the same level of prosperity, standard of living and market conditions that today characterize the old transatlantic world. Goldman Sachs estimates that, by 2050, China will be the world’s leading economy, closely followed by India and the United States, with no European country featuring in the higher rankings of this league table. These forecasts also signal what Mahbubani calls the “rise of Asia”, marking a massive shift in economic power never before seen in the history of the world.
Discussions thus turned to the question of what these new global economic balances mean today and what they might mean in the future. In political terms, those in attendance noted that the shift from a Washington consensus to a Beijing consensus is becoming increasingly evident, with the Western dominance that lasted for more than three centuries seen as now being over. Indeed, it was the West itself which – once the Cold War came to an end – showed itself incapable of taking advantage of its “victory” and governing the transition. The world is now multipolar: not only has the power balance based on Europe’s centuries-long domination that arose from the industrial revolution changed, but so too has a rule which stood for thousands of years – one which saw minority but dominant societies exploit the rest. But while this rule might be gone forever, it was suggested that even if China is forecast to become the world’s leading economy, it will not be a dominant country. This is still not fully understood in the West, nor is it by any means certain that overly-categorical predictions of Western economic decline and disaster will come to pass. In conclusion, it was felt that the watchwords should therefore be cooperation and paying attention, because the return of Asia could represent an opportunity: the time has come for Europeans to learn from Asian policy-makers, just as in the past there have been many things that Asian policy-makers have learned from the West.
