Despite the
significant progress in Asia, the 21st century is not the Asian
Century unless Asia becomes an influential power to lead the world's economy,
politics, and international relations. These are the characteristics that
scholars have defined the American Century with, “that the global
economy,
security, international relations, and institutions during the twentieth
century were profoundly influenced by the U.S.” (Anonymous, 2013, p. 30). With
demography as Asia's winning card its unstoppable and accelerating rise (West,
2018, p. 3) has been acknowledged. While the average of the working population
is increasing to 50 percent (Anonymous, 2013, p. 9), Asia will “become home to
most of the world’s middle class by as early as 2025” (West, 2018, p. 3). China
has driven the growth of the global economy (West, 2018, p. 2) and the lives of
nearly three billion people in China, India, and Indonesia are getting better,
but Asia is yet to dominate the world.
Various
fundamental problems have hindered the 21st century to be the Asian
Century. The biggest problem is that culturally and politically Asia is too
fragmented and cannot form a single influential power over the world. Some commentators
even go further to completely deny Asia to be “in any sense a cohesive entity”
(Anonymous, 2013, p. 11). Asia consists of separate sovereignties, each based
on a distinct culture and historical context, while that is not the case in
America. China holds Asia's largest economy but the impacts of government in
many sectors are greater than that of the private sector. While centralization
has restricted innovation (Anonymous, 2013, p. 20), China suffers a
“middle-income trap” (Anonymous, 2013, p. 22). All these have darkened the
horizon of economic sovereignty.
Other problems
as highlighted by West (2018) that could hamper the Asian Century include the
failure to address disagreements among Asian elites, weak governance in
tackling corruptions, lack of global norms such as democratic policies and
institutions, human rights, inclusive societies, rights of ethnicities and
minorities, women, LGBT people, and children. In spite of rapid growth the
Asian region is not comparable to America and it is too early to name the 21st century as the Asian Century.
References:
Anonymous.
(2013). The Asian century: Reality or hype? The
International Economy 27(3), 8-31.
Anwar, D. (2019). Indonesia-China
Relations: Coming Full Circle? Southeast Asian Affairs, 2019,
145-161.
West, J.
(2018). Introduction. (pp.1-15). In Asian
Century on a knife-edge: A 360 degree analysis of Asia’s recent economic
development. Singapore: Palgrave MacMillan.