Eastern promise: why the West must abandon its fear of Asia

BOOK REVIEW: The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the EastBy Kishore Mahbubani; PublicAffairs.

KISHORE MAHBUBANI'S new book is his third. In all three, as well as in several widely-read essays, a single theme has dominated his writing: the changing nature of relationships between the East, primarily countries in Asia, and the West, primarily North America and Western Europe.

Numerous authors have traced the transformation in East-West politics and business, typically charting a shift from an American-dominated 20th century toward Asia's emerging pre-eminence in the 21st. Facts and figures jump off their pages: GDP, per capita income, exports, and more. By contrast, Mahbubani's strength is in his ability to analyse mindsets and thought patterns. Despite his critics' claims, he is an apologist for neither West nor East. In his writing, there are no good guys against bad guys but instead nuanced arguments. If his sympathies seem to lie with the East in the present book, it is because he seeks to describe an Eastern perspective to a Western audience.

Prof Mahbubani's credentials add gravitas to his analysis. Head of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, he had a long and distinguished career as a Singaporean diplomat including stints in Washington DC and as ambassador to the UN. His status as a Singaporean Indian locates him in the least influential of Singapore's three main ethnic groups, after overseas Chinese and Malays.

Prof Mahbubani's diplomatic experiences exposed him to Eastern and Western societies. His home country bills itself as translator of the East to Westerners and hosts many Western multinationals. His upbringing in a poor family in a minority group in multicultural Singapore sensitised him to differences in world views that arise from social class, culture, and religion.

In language that is succinct, accessible, and pointed, Mahbubani credits the West with creating modern societies that have greatly benefited humanity. He traces seven pillars of that accomplishment, which include free markets, meritocracy, and education. In his view, the East is succeeding because it adopted many of the principles the West used to "modernise" and professes to hold dear. It has out-Westernised the West in pursuit of economic growth. How has the West responded to the rapid development of economies like China and India? Has it welcomed the triumph of its own principles in countries that have long resisted them? On the contrary, the threat of jobs migrating to lower cost economies and fears of expansionist Chinese geopolitical ambitions have provoked a defensive reaction. Forget about free markets, it's time for protectionism.

In Mahbubani's analysis, the West has used its immense power in global institutions to protect a playing field tilted against the East. So nothing happens in the UN without approval of the Western-dominated Security Council. At the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the US and Europe appoint their choices to top positions. Countries representing the West's 900 million people, 13.8 per cent of the world's population (Mahbubani says 12 per cent, but maths is clearly not his strong suit) dictate conditions for the planet's other 5.6 billion.

Worse still, the West has badly managed recent developments such as the Asian financial crisis, global warming, the terrorist threat, and the Doha Round of global trade negotiations. As a result, in the eyes of the developing world, it has lost its right to continued domination.

Mahbubani depicts China as an emerging giant interested in working in partnership with the West and perplexed at its vilification in the West. If you find yourself snickering at that idea, he would say it demonstrates how deeply media-created misconceptions run.

Mahbubani expresses admiration for the US's relatively benign reign as the world's superpower. He is not as positive about Europe, in particular criticising the EU for not creating a free trade area that encompasses North Africa. Derived from a history of colonialism: "This European tendency to treat non-European cultures and societies with disdain and condescension has become deeply rooted in the European psyche."

According to Mahbubani: "The time to restructure the world order has come." He recommends democracy, rule of law, and social justice as guiding principles for discussions among country leaders. He argues that pragmatism and East-West partnership, not ideology and rivalry, should prevail. Otherwise, a fertile period of global trade expansion that has brought hundreds of millions out of poverty will end. In a cascade of protectionism and adversarial relations, all of us will lose.

Is Mahbubani correct? In my experience, which includes time living and working in Asia, he accurately presents the views of many Asians. If anything, he is restrained.

If you want to maintain notions of developed Western hemisphere countries benignly acting in the best interests of the world, get a different book. If you are open instead to seeing the world through an Asian lens less sanguine about Western motives, you should find this book highly thought-provoking.

Professor Tom Begley is Dean of the UCD Business Schools.