Is the 21st century the Asian century? If it is, will the West accept it? What challenges are Asian countries facing? These questions were raised and answered by Singaporean diplomat and academic Kishore Mahbubani at an event hosted by the Center for China and Globalization on July 18 to launch the Chinese edition of Mahbubani’s popular book The Asian 21st Century. In his 30-minute speech, the former Singaporean ambassador to the United Nations shared with the audience in Beijing why the remaining 77 years in this century belong to Asia. Edited excerpts of Mahbubani’s speech follow:
The rise of Asia
Why is the Asian century happening? There are many reasons for it. And the first and the most obvious one is that it is a perfectly natural development. If you look at the past 2,000 years of world history, in 1,800 of those years, the two largest economies of the world were those of China and India.
So it’s only in the last 200 years that
