Toward the Asian Century — The Asia to Come

Last time, we saw how the two giants, China and India, stirred from their slumber, and how their rise summoned the phrase ‘the Asian Century.’ China, which connected with the world through manufacturing, and India, which connected with the world through brainpower. The momentum of these two great powers was trying to push Asia, long placed on the world’s periphery, back to the center once more.

This series began nearly three hundred years ago, in a prosperous era when Asia still accounted for more than half of the world economy. From there it received the shock of the West, passed through an age of colonization and dependence, went through the storms of independence and the divisions of the Cold War, and arrived at miraculous growth and the rise of the two giants. In this final chapter, we stand at the present point of that long journey and survey, without rushing to an answer, where the Asia to come is trying to go. Neither glory alone nor anxiety alone. Carrying both light and shadow, Asia is about to walk into the next era.

The Center of Gravity, Toward Asia Once More

The figures show one great trend. The share of the entire world economy held by Asia, after falling sharply in the twentieth century, is said to have recovered strongly upon entering the twenty-first century. In the outlook called ‘Asia 2050,’ presented by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2011, it was projected that, if things went well, Asia could account for roughly half of the world’s gross domestic product by the middle of the twenty-first century.

This can be seen not so much as an entirely new future, but in a sense as a ‘return to a former form.’ As we saw in the first episode of this series, eighteenth-century Asia was the center of the world economy. The position lost through the rise of the West, Asia is now reclaiming after roughly two centuries—it can also be portrayed this way.

In the Space Between the Great Powers

In a reviving Asia, new tensions are also being born. One of them is said to be the rivalry between a risen China and an America that has long led the world. In various fields—trade, technology, security—the competition between the two countries is reported, and its effects reach across all of Asia.

In this in-between space, what shows a distinctive presence is the framework of regional cooperation that gathers the countries of Southeast Asia, ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations). This framework, launched in 1967, has deepened economic ties while increasing its member states. For many Southeast Asian countries, China is a trading partner of the highest order, and at the same time, relations with America also carry heavy meaning. Rather than choosing one or the other, they try to maintain ties with both—such a stance has often been reported.

A not-small number of countries caught between the great powers try to side too much with neither, and to protect their own interests. That steering is by no means easy. Yet the way they shrewdly maneuver while dealing with multiple great powers is also one proof that a region once carved up as colonies has come to stand on its own will.

Four Remaining Challenges

On the reverse side of the story of revival, Asia carries any number of heavy challenges. Among those often cited are the four of inequality, environment, aging, and division.

First, inequality. Rapid growth is said to have widened the gap between people who grow rich and people left behind. Between country and country, and within the same country too, unfillable chasms remained. Second, the environment. Asia, which grew rapidly as the world’s factory and also as an enormous place of consumption, bears the great burden of responding to air and water pollution and to climate change. Third, aging. In some countries and regions that have gained wealth, the number of children is falling, and society is rapidly growing older. The decline of the workforce, and the strain of systems to support the elderly, are said to be great questions for the time ahead. Fourth, division. The rivalry of great powers, tensions over religion and ethnicity, confrontations across borders—within and beyond the region, fractures still remain.

At the Story’s Pause

We have traced a journey of three hundred years this far. Asia, once the center of the world, was pushed to the periphery by the shock of the West, passed through the pain of colonization, war, and division, and then, through independence and growth, is now returning once more to the center. Yet it is still too early to write ‘and they lived happily ever after’ into this story.

Will a revived Asia become a center that richly nourishes the world as it once did? Or will it be tripped up by the challenges it carries and become the epicenter of new divisions and conflicts? That answer, no one yet knows. History does not advance along a single road, but is a chain of many forking paths. Which road to choose next is entrusted to the hands of the people living now.

If there is one thing that is certain, it is that Asia’s strides are no longer an affair in a corner of the world. The choices of the vast number of people who live in this land will greatly sway the shape of the world to come. We have traced the history of Asia not merely to feel nostalgic for the past, but in order to understand, even a little more deeply, the world that is about to arrive.

Thank you for accompanying me on this long journey. If this series—which, while gazing at both light and shadow, has avoided assertion and set out multiple views side by side—can become one small clue when you gaze upon the Asia, and the world, to come, that would be my joy. The story lowers its curtain here, for now. Yet the history of Asia itself, even at this very moment, continues to be written before our eyes.

【A History of Asia: A Continent’s Rise, Fall and Return — End】