The Asian Century

We are entering a new era of world history: the end of Western domination and the arrival of the Asian century. The question is: Will Washington wake up to this reality? When the new president meets with schedulers in January, will he or she say, "Cut down on the visits to Europe. Send me across the Pacific, not the Atlantic. The G-8 represents a sunset process. Let us focus on the new sunrise organizations in Asia."If such a shift seems inconceivable, it shows how much old mental maps continue to cloud the vision of leading Americans. The West has so dominated world history for the last 200 years that we forget that from the year 1 to the year 1820, the two largest economies in the world (as demonstrated by British economic historian Angus Maddison) were China and India. A study by Goldman Sachs in 2003 confidently predicted that by 2050, the four largest economies in the world will be China, the U.S., India and Japan, in that order. A more recent evaluation by Goldman Sachs showed that this could happen sooner and that the Indian economy could surpass that of the U.S. by 2043.The changes will be dramatic and happen quickly. Economist and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers put it this way: During the Industrial Revolution, the standard of living rose at a rate of maybe 50% during a person's life span. Asia's current growth rate represents an unprecedented 100-fold (that is, 10,000%) rise in standards of living during one lifetime.The paradox about the American inability to recognize this great shift is that the United States has done more than any other country to spark this Asian revival. In the 19th century era of European domination, Asia was subjugated and colonized. As the U.S. became the dominant power, Asia was progressively liberated.