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For sale: one century. Twenty-five years’ heavy use. Multiple careless owners. Some stains.
Over the past couple of decades, many have speculated that the eventual buyer would be Asia and this 21st century, in the long run, Asian.
However mythological the very concept of Asia may be, absent any regional political coherence, the prediction had seductiveness and saleability — especially to global investors. But have Donald Trump and a trade war made the definitive change of ownership more or less likely?
Hegemonies run in cycles, goes the broad thesis. Just as Europe had ceded to the US roughly around the turn of the last century, so America’s decline would propel the global centre of gravity to its next natural home in Asia.
Theories have always varied on how rapidly, bloodlessly or decisively this would play out. The geopolitical implications are tormented at best and terrifying at worst, so believers tend to focus the optimistic version on the long-term economic hegemony of east, south-east and south Asia. The rest of the world would simply learn to adjust.
This theory relies on the idea that an entrepreneurial, technologically accomplished China, along with a more vigorous India and the region’s expansive middle classes elsewhere, would provide the prosperity necessary to secure naming rights for the century on behalf of a generalised “Asia”. It would achieve this however intractable the regional divisions might be and however firmly the US remained at the centre of the global economy.
But 25 years in, and for all the region’s indisputable vibrancy, the Asian century term now comes with more caveat than conviction. Internal geopolitical rivalries — let alone the more perilously fractious US-China clash — are deeper. Demographic crisis has hit the powerhouses of China, Japan and South Korea sooner and harder than expected. And de-globalisation or a more multi-polar world, if that is indeed what is happening, poses a formidable challenge to the business models of many regional economies, including China’s.
The second Trump presidency, though, sharpens the debate. Global recession, steep tariffs, dumping of surplus goods and a prolonged trade war could hammer Asian growth in ways that exacerbate all of the above.
Meanwhile China, some analysts argue, is emphatically not the geoeconomic centrepiece the region as a whole wants. Even with Trump turbocharging the erosion of American soft power and trustworthiness, Beijing has so far failed to present its neighbours with a more alluring counter-offer or model. China’s growth over the first quarter of this century has been extraordinary. But it is not yet wealthy enough to generate the scale of demand that will shape the future as irrefutably Asian.
The alternative argument is that the behaviour of the US under its current leadership will accelerate the arrival of the Asian century. In particular, Beijing will be able to profit from Washington’s mis-steps. President Xi Jinping’s recent tour of south-east Asia has been seen by some as evidence that China is already taking advantage, that once-hard regional lines are softening and that Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” create a thoroughly exploitable global commonality of victimhood.
And whether intended by voters or not, the 2024 election gave the US president a mandate to declare America’s fatigue with its global role — and to downplay the benefits of low-cost imports and foreign-financed deficits.
For Fujitsu chief economist Martin Schulz, the Asian century was elusive as long as its economies were dependent suppliers to the US. Has Trump now provided an opening for Asia to become a new pole in geoeconomics, or for its economies to become chief beneficiaries of a multi-polar world?
Theoretically, perhaps: if US policy pushes China to technology leadership long before it would have wanted; if Asian governments become more aggressive in their R&D funding both at home and from abroad as the US scales back; if vanishing US Treasury investment opportunities means more investment in Asia and more open capital markets; if greater Chinese dependence on Asian customers requires it to be more free trading. It’s plausible. But all of it, Schulz cautions, would require far greater Asian consumption and policy co-ordination than seems immediately likely.
The dirty secret of the Asian century was that, while predicated on American decline, it was dependent on that happening steadily, rationally, peacefully and profitably for Asia. Those conditions may yet be met but probably will not. It is still far too early to say who will own this century.
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