What is Asia? Isaac Neo

The Myth of the Asian Century: A Lowy Institute Paper Bilahari Kausikan Penguin: 2025 . Is the twenty-first century an Asian one? According to former Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan, this is entirely the wrong question to be asking. We should instead be asking: Can a century even be ‘Asian’? In The Myth of the Asian Century: A Lowy Institute Paper, Kausikan pushes back against Asian triumphalist narratives, stressing that the idea of an “Asian Century”—referring to an expected dominance of Asian countries in global politics, economics, and culture in the twenty-first century—is “too often regarded as self-evident and thus more often repeated than examined” and that there are “serious conceptual and historical difficulties in associating an entire political era or order with any continent”. This isn’t a new argument. As Kausikan mentions in his introduction, he first engaged with the concept of Asia as not being geographically bound but contingent on political developments and needs in his bachelor’s thesis in political science, titled The Idea of Asia. In it, he wrote that “the argument about the meaning of Asia is a political argument”, and that, as a political idea, ‘Asia’ is open to varying interpretations. Several parts of The Myth of the Asian Century are also derived from speeches he made over the years on the subject. Here, however, he proposes that the use of ‘Asian’ isn’t politically neutral and, for some proponents of the Asian Century, is treated as analogous to China. This narrative, propagated by scholars and statesmen alike—including one of Kausikan’s former colleagues, Kishore Mahbubani—is that the resurgence of Asian economies, particularly China and India, heralds the end of an era of Western domination and a return to their historical position as the top economies in the world. In response, Kausikan contends that “growth and economic weight is, however, not strategic coherence, nor does it lead to collaboration”. It doesn’t matter if China and India are the fastest-growing economies if they aren’t cooperating on the international stage; their long-standing border dispute continues to simmer, leading to sporadic skirmishes over the past few decades. Underpinning this argument is Kausikan’s belief that “competition and conflict… are inherent characteristics of any system of sovereign states”—a key tenet of the realist school of international relations theory, which he often refers to. Asia, then, cannot be taken as a single political unit because states, driven by nationalism, will not freely cooperate in an anarchic international system with no central governing body. The resurgent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia and the war of words between China and Japan are just a few examples of how historical grievances and machinations by political leaders can sustain tensions. Furthermore, Kausikan notes, much of Asia’s economic growth rests on “foundations of stability” laid by the US after the Second World War. The modern industrial societies of many Asian countries adapted US or European economic models for local use and traded within a global capitalist system that had no competitor after the fall of the Soviet Union. The issue, then, is whether the US is walking away from the system it has built, exemplified by President Donald Trump’s muscular use of foreign policy, including the imposition of global tariffs even on allies such as Japan and South Korea. Kausikan is bullish on this topic. He notes that the current transactional approach to US foreign policy isn’t new—with the exception of George W. Bush after 9/11, every post–Cold War US president has focused on domestic priorities. Trump, he adds, isn’t against trade, only “unfair trade”. Brazen comments about Greenland, a unilateral approach to Gaza, and military actions in Venezuela are far from isolationist; Trump, Kausikan says, is simply ripping “the moralistic wrapping off American foreign policy” and nakedly exposing the primacy of any country’s foreign policy, which is to put its own interests first. As long as Asian countries continue approaching relations with the US along the lines of common interests, they shall find purchase with President Trump. Turning to China in a chapter titled ‘Has China already lost?’—which appears to be a dig at Mahbubani, who previously wrote a book titled Has China Won?: The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy—Kausikan lays out how most countries continue to balance between the US and China. The core identities of some countries, like Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam, “have for centuries been defined in opposition to China and the Sinosphere”; they will not subordinate themselves to an Asia led by China so easily. One only has to look at how the spectre of nationalism was used to Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae’s benefit in the latest elections, after she invoked the wrath of Beijing over her comments on Japan’s potential response to an invasion of Taiwan. Kausikan also outlines several weaknesses in China’s political model, particularly flagging economic growth and President Xi Jinping’s over-concentration of power. He attempts to link the two, saying that “sustaining growth in China requires a new balance between political control and economic efficiency”. While it’s true Xi has increasingly focused on security and control in the past few years, the notion that more growth will lead to more loosening up politically is an axiomatic claim that requires more evidence. Both Kausikan and Mahbubani’s arguments appear to have a metanarrative behind them. Recall the ‘Asian Values’ debate in the 1990s, where leaders like former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad argued that Asian countries value consensus and harmony as cultural values, pushing back against what they deemed to be Western attempts to impose universal standards of human rights and liberal democracy. Kausikan, then still part of Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, published commentaries supporting the Asian Values argument; however, in 2014, he explained that the real reason behind Singapore pushing that narrative was to buy time for the new Bill Clinton administration to cool down their hawkish rhetoric towards China in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. By trying to complicate the US approach towards democracy and human rights, Singapore hoped to draw the Americans’ attention away from China’s human rights violations. Although he’s no longer in the Foreign Service, Kausikan’s views still hold weight among the country’s intellectual and state elites. The Myth of the Asian Century and his ongoing critique of the Asian Century narrative can be seen as a diplomatic push for Asian countries to continue the balancing act, buying time for the US to refocus its lens on Asia. Similarly, Mahbubani’s push for the Asian Century narrative can be seen as advocating for countries, especially Western countries, to see China’s rise as a return to a ‘natural order’—hence, there’s no need to succumb to the vicissitudes of great-power competition. Interestingly, both Kausikan and Mahbubani arrive at roughly the same conclusion: that countries may end up (or, in Mahbubani’s case, should support) strengthening multilateral institutions to navigate a more multipolar world. Kausikan terms this “asymmetrical dynamic multipolarity”; essentially, clusters of countries forming alliances and partnerships according to common interests, instead of being ideologically bound to a US–China axis. He says that such a system “cannot be geographically constrained”, but does concede that Asia is “the epicentre of the broad shifts occurring in global politics” and will likely be a ‘test bed’ for such a system. Both former diplomats also agree more than they disagree on how countries will react to China’s rise—Mahbubani stated in a 2020 commentary that countries will still be concerned over China’s resurgence and will want a continuing American presence to balance China’s influence. Where they differ is in their views on the impact of globalisation: Kausikan believes that it “facilitates fragmentation”, while Mahbubani believes that a fear of globalisation is a Western view and that Asian countries embrace globalisation because their societies have benefitted from it. Whither the Asian Century debate? In the book’s introduction, Kausikan gives an anecdote about how S. Rajaratnam, Singapore’s first foreign minister, cautioned against confusing a “foreign policy of words” with a “foreign policy of deeds”, saying that doing so would be as suicidal as “a nun wandering through a red-light district proclaiming the brotherhood of man”. Kausikan reassures readers that “the thought of preaching in a red-light district has never even fleetingly crossed my mind”. While incisively argued, The Myth of the Asian Century offers no clear answers, no balm of Gilead for those looking for spiritual resolution to the debate; only the promise that complexity will continue to characterise the international system, which requires clear minds instead of offertory prayers. - Tags: Asia, Bilahari Kausikan, Isaac Neo, Issue 43, Singapore