BANGKOK
FORMER Singapore Ambassador to the United Nations Kishore Mahbubani – whose writings on Asia have placed him on the world’s geopolitical lecture circuit — recently spoke at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT).
The timing was good; the APEC summit in Singapore is around the corner, and US President Barack Obama will be attending — and also meeting with ASEAN leaders in Singapore.
The APEC forum started its meetings over the weekend, with the summit to be held this week.
Always engaging and provocative, Mr Mahbubani began writing about the rise of Asia well before it was fashionable.
Five years ago he quit Singapore's foreign service, and is now Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, which draws students from across over 50 countries.
His latest book is titled The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. The title of Mr Mahbubani’s talk was 'Why the West fails to understand the rise of the East'.
What the world is witnessing, is not so much the rise of Asia but the return of Asia, he said. It is an important distinction.
'From the year one to the year 1820 the two largest economies in the world were consistently China and India, so if by 2050 or probably earlier as Goldman Sachs predicts the four largest economies in the world will be China, India, the USA and Japan, that is not a deviation from the norm," he said.
"That is a return to a 2000 year norm that vastly overrides the last 200 year norm."
Mr Mahbubani also criticized the western media, which he said even in its most upbeat assessments of Asia, always managed to slip in a caveat or two. This reflected a wider intellectual resistance to the power shift, he said.
"The return of Asia is by far the biggest story in the world. But I've been amazed at the amount of resistance to accepting this reality.
"And I've come to the conclusion that there's a very deep psychological resistance in many leading western minds to even conceiving of the possibility of a world that is so different to the 19th and 20th centuries."
He qualified that remark though, by observing that the response varied, from the US to Europe and also within Europe.
He was optimistic about the difference the election of President Barack Obama has made to the US's global image – and what it will do for ties with Asia.
"Anything that shakes the American intellectual belief that the world will continue to revolve around America as the centre of the universe is an idea that is very difficult for Americans to accept," he said.
But he stressed in the context of the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit in Singapore: "I think Obama understands the importance of the Pacific."
"I suspect given his background... he has a different sense of where the centre of geography of the world is.
"I think Obama gets the Asia story right, and I am confident that his participation in these meetings plus his visits to several Asian countries will result in improvement in US relations with Asia."
On the US's engagement with Asean he said part of the reason for Washington's closer involvement could be to match China’s influence.
"If China is improving its ties in leaps and bounds with the Asean countries, it is not in America’s interest to be left behind," he said.
Read more about the current Apec meeting in Singapore:
Apec is as good as FTA
Hu to visit Singapore