Kishore Mahbubani: Asia is rising even as the West tries to ignore it

The 21st century is going to be the Asia's century even if the Western media does not report it, said Kishore Mahbubani, former Singapore ambassador to the UN, at the book launch of the Chinese edition of his book, The Asian 21st Century, in Beijing on Tuesday.

"If you look at the past 2,000 years of world history, in 1,800 out of the past 2,000 years, the two largest economies of the world were always China and India. It's only in the past 200 years that Europe took off. And then North America took off. But the past 200 years of Western domination of world history have been an aberration. It's been abnormal. So what you're seeing in the 21 century is the end of the aberration and the return of the normal, where China, India, and other Asian countries are once again emerging as the largest economies in the world," said Mahbubani, a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute and the National University of Singapore.

"The West is refusing to accept the idea of the Asian Century because, in the past 200 years, the West has occupied a lot of geopolitical space in the world. It controls many important organizations, and doesn't want to give up its control," said Mahbubani.

The book launch event was hosted by the Center for China and Globalization(CCG). The book, The Asian 21st Century, is part of the "China and Globalization" series and has received broad attention internationally.

The English version of the book, offered as an open access book, tallied over 3 million downloads after its release on January 1, 2022, more than 10 times the average number of downloads for academic publications.