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The Asian Century

from bandwidth magazine - Nov/Dec 2003

We’ve had the European century and the American century. Clearly, this will be the Asian century. The largest investors in America are not Americans – but China, Taiwan and Japan. We see an unprecedented shift of high-tech manufacturing towards Asia and, latterly, a similar shift in services and research and development. The fastest-growing technology companies in the world are Asian – Wipro, Huawei, ZTE, Samsung and Infosys. And lately, we see that the buyers of what were previously American-funded regional infrastructures – the FLAG Telecoms, the Global Crossings and so on – are Asian.

      Asia’s growing supremacy can only be partly explained by its large markets and cheap labour pools. It is also about quality and competition. Entry to some of the top IT schools in India is reputedly 100 times harder than entry to American Ivy League universities.

     Likewise, innovation and influence are becoming part of the Asian century story. One superficial but tangible sign is the growing influence of Asian idioms, actors, directors and concepts in “Hollywood” – read, global – cinema.

     The whole point of this is that the Asian century is not about conquest, final victories or win-lose. It is not as if Asia, like, say, the Middle East, is an insular and closed place. Asia is, indeed, prospering now by emulating what the European and American spheres did before it in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries – it is absorbing outside ideas, adapting foreign solutions to its own ideas and influencing the economies and societies of others. Even a more cynical take shows us the same thing – after all, what is the real difference between stealing intellectual property such as software to secure comparative economic advantage and, say, the colonialist seizure of lands in yesteryear to expand one’s economic sphere.

     Trade in goods, services and ideas is the motif of the Asian century. It is why APEC is arguably a more meaningful institution for the modern age than, say, the Islamic OIC that met in Malaysia last month – a forum that had little to say about improving the lives of people in its member states and a lot to say about historical enmities against Jews and Europeans.

     The Asian century is more than 3G phones for middle-class Japanese and trendy bars for IT professionals in Banglalore. It’s about an immense shift in values for the hundreds of millions of people who are emerging from the peasant poverty of their parents.

     Recent economic problems notwithstanding, most countries are going forward in delivering better lives for their citizens. And that progress sees no sign of slowing.

     The authoritarian family, business and government structures of yesteryear are slowly fragmenting in favour of what is the perpetual and structural destruction wrought by the capitalism of ideas, creativity and insurgence. This inflection is not without its problems. It is, in part, a root cause of terrorism, among other things.

     But it all adds up to one thing. The Asian century will be one hell of a ride. Welcome to your guide to it…