Author: Robert Cribb, President of the Asian Studies Association of Australia

If ‘the Asian century’ means a global century in which Asia is a full participant, commensurate with its size and energy, then – within the constraints of resource depletion and environmental change – we can certainly expect an Asian century. In other words, the rise of Asia does not need to mean the fall of the West.

But the bigger question is whether Asia’s enhanced presence on the global stage will change the world’s ways of thinking. The rise of the West generated the new modes of thought about the nature of things and the character of humanity that we call modernity. Western societies themselves were transformed before their expansion transformed the rest of the world. Asian societies responded creatively to the Western challenge, but the most important and creative ideas coming out of Asia – from Gandhism to Maoism to the Grameen Bank – were responses to the global agenda set originally by the West; they were not independent attempts to set new agendas for the future.

A century in which Asia takes charge of the world’s thinking agendas? Now that would be an exciting change.

To read more by Dr. Cribb on this, click here.