In his long-awaited new manuscript, Kishore Mahbubani, - whom the Foreign Policy Magazine included among the top 100 public intellectuals in the world - describes how for centuries, the Asians –from Tehran to Tokyo-  have been bystanders in world history, reacting defenselessly to the surges of Western commerce, thought, and power. That era is over. Asia is returning to the center stage it occupied for eighteen centuries before the rise of the West.

 

Asians have absorbed and understood Western best practices in many areas, from free-market economics to the embrace of innovative science and technology, meritocracy and the rule of law. And they have become innovative in their own way, creating new patterns of cooperation not seen in the West. Their rise is unstoppable-by 2050, three of the world’s largest economies will be Asian: China, India, and Japan.

 

Will the West resist the rise of Asia? This scenario will be disastrous. Asia wants to replicate, not dominate, the West. But the West must gracefully share power with Asia, by giving up its automatic domination of global institutions from the IMF to the World Bank, from the G7 to the UN Security Council.

 

History teaches that the rise of new powers almost always leads to tension and conflict. This, too, may happen. But they can be avoided if the world accepts the key principles for a new global partnership spelled out in The New Asian Hemisphere.

 

For more information about the book, please visit www.mahbubani.net

 

Kishore Mahbubani is the author of two previous books: Can Asians Think? and Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World. Currently, the Dean and Professor in the Practice of Public Policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, Kishore served for 33 years as a diplomat for Singapore and has written many articles on world affairs. He served two stints as Singapore's Ambassador to the UN and as President of the UN Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002. In 2005, Foreign Policy magazine included him among the top 100 public intellectuals in the world.