(MENAFN- Asia Times) “I see potential in Asia going from strength to strength, and not just in terms of business opportunities and economic development but in imagining a new planetary future.” – Sohail Inayatullah, UNESCO chairman in futures studies
Nearly 100 years ago, in 1924, German diplomat Karl Haushofer introduced the term“Pacific age.” Haushofer anticipated the emergence of Japan, China and India as the next global powerhouses. He wrote:
The term Asian Century is traced to the 1980s. After a meeting between Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and Rajiv Gandhi, the prime Minister of India, Deng reportedly said:“In recent years people have been saying that the next century will be the century of Asia and the Pacific.”
Much has been written about the Asian Century since the 1980s, starting with Japan's rapid rise, the so-called Four Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore), China's decade of double-digit growth, and now India, developing at breakneck speed and confirming the prediction of Klaus Haushofer a century ago.
Discussions about the Asian Century typically focus on Asia's economic and industrial prowess. Little attention is given to cultural factors, and how they may shape the future of Asia and the post-industrial era. A notable exception is
ASIA 2038:
Ten Disruptions that Change Everything, authored by Sohail Inayatullaw and Lu Na.
ASIA 2038 was initially published in 2018, but the current global crisis has made it all the more topical. The authors don't neglect economics but they zoom in on the human dimension of Asia's transformation – the role of women, the re-imagination of the traditional extended family, the need for bioregionalism, and the growing symbiosis of humans and technology.
Co-author Sohail Inayatullah,
UNESCO chairman in futures studies, argues that the transformation of Asia could have global implications.“I see potential in Asia going from strength to strength, and not just in terms of business opportunities and economic development but in imagining a new planetary future.”
ASIA 2038 reminds us that globalization, like modernization, does not necessarily mean Westernization. Asia absorbed Western science and technology and Asianized versions of political systems, but the West with its social and political polarization and its hyper-individualism is not a model for post-industrial society.
Asia's most highly developed countries such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore point at multiple modernities, or, as the authors put it, alternative modernities. Asia is embarking on a cultural reawakening and trying to transform society by reinterpreting its own rich traditions – Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sufism.
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