CNRS Éditions

The Asian side of the world

Editorials on Asia and the Pacific 2002-2011

Jean-François Sabouret (dir.)

DOI: 10.4000/books.editionscnrs.12420

Publisher: CNRS Éditions

Place of publication: Paris

Year of publication: 2012

Published on OpenEdition Books: 20 August 2019

Series: CNRS Alpha

Electronic EAN: 9782271122223

https://books.openedition.org

Printed version

EAN (Print version): 9782271077448

Number of pages: 520

Electronic reference

SABOURET, Jean-François (ed.). The Asian side of the world: Editorials on Asia and the Pacific 2002-2011. New edition [online]. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2012 (generated 08 mars 2022). Available on the Internet: <http://books.openedition.org/editionscnrs/12420>. ISBN: 9782271122223. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/books.editionscnrs.12420.

This text was automatically generated on 8 March 2022.

© CNRS Éditions, 2012

Terms of use:
http://www.openedition.org/6540

Abstracts

Asia and the Pacific, an immense region, both new and old, in which two thirds of the world lives. A region of superlatives, exceptions, China, continually facing disasters and risks from its past, India, a continent of its own, Japan, archipelago of the future. It is a region that is attracting global growth and becoming the centre of the world. Who could have predicted that the GDP of Asia and the Pacific would be equal to that of the European Union? And what will tomorrow bring?

This compilation gives an overview of Asia's world, bringing together roughly a hundred texts written by researchers and specialists and that have been published on Asia and the Pacific Network's website (CNRS/FMSH) between 2002 and 2011. These works covering the humanities and social science recount the past, tell us of the future and illustrate the complexity of Asia and the Pacific through its flaws, strengths and challenges. They reveal the profound roots and depth of the dynamism of these new powers that could soon take over the future of humanity.

Numerous researchers and academics specialising in contemporary Asia and the Pacific are bringing into light many aspects of this great and inevitable shift in the world.

Jean-François Sabouret (dir.)

Centre national de la recherche scientifique

Editor's note

The texts in The Asian side of the world (in the English version) have been proofread by Sinéad Quigley and Victoria Wong.
We would like to thank Rhonda Campbell, Patrice Cochet-Balmet, Judith Logsdon-Dubois, Sophie Nellis, Julia Squirrell and Luc Thuilleaux for their participation.
This publication has been produced with the support of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH), the Direction des Relations Internationales du Ministère de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement supérieur (Directorate for International Relations of the French Ministry of Research and Higher Education) and Paris city Research Council.

Editor's note

The texts in The Asian side of the world (in the English version) have been proofread by Sinéad Quigley and Victoria Wong.
We would like to thank Rhonda Campbell, Patrice Cochet-Balmet, Judith Logsdon-Dubois, Sophie Nellis, Julia Squirrell and Luc Thuilleaux for their participation.
This publication has been produced with the support of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH), the Direction des Relations Internationales du Ministère de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement supérieur (Directorate for International Relations of the French Ministry of Research and Higher Education) and Paris city Research Council.

Table of contents

Foreword: Réseau Asie (Asia Network), a network of the future

Maurice Aymard

Introduction: Asia going from strength to strength or is the world on the verge of a new era?

Jean-François Sabouret

Part one. Regional dynamics and globalisation

Globalisation or Asianisation?

Nayan Chanda

The success of Asian products in the 16th to 18th century Europe

Philippe Haudrère

Towards an “Asian Community”?

Bruno Jetin

Economic reasons

Strategic reasons

The human factor: is the main one forgotten?

Australia and the Asia-Pacific

Jean-Pascal Bassino

Australia and its region

Xavier Pons

Oceania: dream islands or examples of new world disorder?

Jean-Marc Regnault

The Pacific Islands: at the heart or on the margins of globalisation?

Christian Huetz de Lemps

Old and new: geopolitics in Asia

Jean-Luc Racine

An open history of India in Asia

Claude Markovits

Securitisation: a danger for Asia

Natacha Aveline

Low success of debt securities in Asia

One securitisation can hide another

China: commercial areas of globalisation

Gilles Guiheux

Who benefits from Chinese factories?

Jean Ruffier

The Mingongs

Western brands

Private Chinese entrepreneurs

Water, ecosystems and sustainable development in arid and semi-arid areas

Marie-Françoise Courel

Desert and water

International conference

The workshops

The challenges of water: towards a science of complex systems

Rice production systems in Asia

The constant presence of an essential cereal on a changing continent

Guy Trébuil

Does globalisation act as an ethnocide?

Olivier Ferrari and Jacques Ivanoff

The “great game” of regionalisation in East Asia

Bertrand Fort

A few words on Central Asia

Vincent Fourniau

The territory

A landlocked region

Unity and diversity

Islam and globalisation in post-Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus

Bayram Balci

The encounter between local Islam and external influences

The States facing a globalised Islam

The experience of war in East Asia

Hugues Tertrais

The Chinese triads in South-East Asia: from a “total social phenomenon” to a transnational criminal organisation?

Jean Baffie

A regional and interdisciplinary approach to human trafficking with the intent of sexual exploitation in South-East Asia

Pierre Le Roux and Emmanuel Dialma

The double decline of the sex market as a scientific object

The Strait of Malacca: an inland sea

Nathalie Fau

OSCE and the Kazakh Presidency in 2010

Wanda Dressler

Part two. National challenges and their strategies to overcome them

The cultural impact of the Matignon-Oudinot Agreements

Dominique Jouve

Comparative studies on China and Japan

Denis Tersen

China-Japan: their inability to communicate and its causes

François Godement

China and Japan face to face: economic partners, strategic rivals

Claude Meyer

Flourishing economic relations against a backdrop of political divorce

The Chinese-Japanese rivalry for leadership in Asia

Post-war Japan and the democracy of opinion

Paul Jobin, Yoshio Miyake and Noriko Berlinguez-Kono

After Iraq: what does the future hold for Japan?

Jean-Marie Bouissou

Japan: an unusual crisis

Évelyne Dourille-Feer

Liberal interpretation of the Japanese crisis

A crisis that is shaped by social and political factors rather than economic factors

Japan: change in power, the test after victory

Karyn Poupée

Donations for all

Uncertain financing

Diplomacy: acting differently, but how?

A voluntarist government, but under close scrutiny

The Japanese senior civil service or the power of the shadows

Pierre-François Souyri

The nuclear crisis in North Korea

Bertrand Chung

The thing about Seoul: from a thing in which people reside to a place where they live

Benjamin Joinau

South Korea: social and interdependent economy and socio-economic development

Eric Bidet

The new Korean Asiatism

Arnaud Leveau

South-East Asia, a land of conquest

Economics in politics

The spokesperson for less advanced economies

A step towards the rest of the world

A political response to China’s economic challenges

Jean-François Huchet

SARS – unveiling the state of health of the Chinese political regime

Jean-Philippe Béja

China 2006: a missed opportunity with history

Michel Bonnin

The relocated people of the Three Gorges

Florence Padovani

What is really going on?

The Beijing Olympic games

Jean Auriac

Sport

And the Games!

The Chinese urban water supply and the role of foreign companies

Delphine Spicq

One for all and all for the Party!

Emilie Tran

Taiwan-China relations: Ma Ying-jeou’s new Chinese policy

Frank Muyard

The future of Taiwan: unification or “silent normalisation”?

Jean-Pierre Cabestan

What do the Tibetans want?

Anne-Marie Blondeau

Tibetan crisis

Jean-Luc Domenach

The political crisis in Nepal and the Maoist insurgency

Gérard Toffin

Bhutan and Nepal: the Himalayan Kingdoms in the perils of democracy – a regional issue between India and China

Thierry Mathou

The monarchy

The challenge of representativeness

The democratisation of Indian democracy

Christophe Jaffrelot

The Indian Union turns sixty

Jean-Luc Racine

Delhi and its “global city” dream

Véronique Dupont

India’s controversial Special Economic Zone policy

Loraine Kennedy

Land and livelihood issues

Growing inequalities

Uncertain perspectives

What does the future hold for Sri Lanka?

Éric Meyer

The sick man of South Asia

At the root of violence

Burma/Myanmar: a country blessed by Gods and cursed for men

Guy Lubeigt

Is Laos at the heart of Asia?

Vatthana Pholsena

Cambodia at a crossroads

Grégoire Rochigneux

Understanding today’s Cambodia

Alain Forest

Beyond the Khmer Rouge tribunal: patterns of justice and remembrance in Cambodia

Anne Yvonne Guillou

The “Khmer Rouge Tribunal”

Justice and revenge

Commemoration mechanisms and funeral rituals

Megawati’s Indonesia: in between authoritarian tensions and religious conflict

Romain Bertrand

A year after the Bali attacks

Michel Picard

Tsunami in Sumatra: questions raised within Indonesian Islam

Andrée Feillard

The impact of constructing the Suramadu Bridge in the Indonesian town of Surabaya

Manuelle Franck

The Philippines’ “Last Frontier”: new possibilities for Palawan

Nicole Revel

Asian capitalism in crisis: a focus on Malaysia

Elsa Lafaye de Micheaux

From Sovietism to dictatorship: important events in the political, social and economic regression

Laurent Bazin, Bernard Hours and Monique Selim

Kyrgyzstan: between democratisation and authoritarianism

Asel Doolotkeldieva

Turkmenistan: a strategic country with a mysterious reality

François d’Anglin

What comparative studies for Asia?

Yves Goudineau

Where are Postcolonial Studies going?

Jacques Pouchepadass

Literature and the social science

Emmanuel Lozerand

A never-ending short story: Australia, land of anthropologists

Laurent Dousset

A bridge between Asia and Europe: the Indo-Europeans according to Georges Dumézil

Daniel Dubuisson

The issue of language classification

Alain Peyraube

Big families

Superfamilies

A super-superfamily: PEA (Proto-East Asian)

Languages and genes

A plead to our roots

Marielle Santoni

Archaeological discoveries and the Silk Road

Henri-Paul Francfort

Central Asia: a term open for discussion

Svetlana Gorshenina

Looking for Asian connections during the colonial period: reconfiguring from the “inside” and “outside”

Christopher Goscha

Being an expert on South-East Asia

Stéphane Dovert

From France to China: years of cultural exchange to research on China

Jean-Luc Domenach

Bhutan and research on the social science

Françoise Pommaret

Writing on contemporary Vietnam: the history and geography of a nation-state

Benoît de Tréglodé

Taking a look at Indian sociology

Roland Lardinois

Iran is not complicated if we take the necessary steps to understand it

Bernard Hourcade

Turning one’s back on the tradition/modernity duality

A difficult balance between Iran, Islam and the international community

The indigenous beauty that is Korea and the real meat extract: thoughts on the cultural ways of Korea from Orientalist to scientific imagination

Alain Delissen

The natives of northern Asia in the post-Communist era

Roberte N. Hamayon

The Mongolian nomads: an anthropological alternative?

Jacques Legrand

Mongolia’s moving religious landscape

Marie-Dominique Even

An initial religious diversity

The nation’s adoption of Buddhism

Compulsory Atheism

Religious revival

... and foreign proselytism

Mongolian pilgrimages to Wutaishan

Isabelle Charleux

The Tungusic community, which who brought us the term “Shaman”

Alexandra Lavrillier

Is there a “revival” of Confucianism in China Today?

Sébastien Billioud

Chinese medicine, a traditional system facing the test of the modern world

Éric Marié

Tibetan medicine: a “science of healing” that is closely related to Buddhism

Fernand Meyer

Nishida Kitarô: the Philosopher, his thought and his challenges

Michel Dalissier

Why did the Japanese not colonise Hokkaido sooner?

Christophe Sabouret

The Year of the Ox: time in ancient Japan

Sylvain Jolivalt

The lunar rooster

Dang Tiên

The Moon and the Sun: Month and Year

From rooster to monkey

The Mysticism of Power

The Time of Love

Têt in Vietnam in the 13TH Century

Universal Harmony

Preservation/restoration/reconstruction/restitution: the archipelagos of mystical thought in Japan and Europe

Jean-Sébastien Cluzel

The three sources of the “city-countryside”

Augustin Berque

Huizhou, the country of the literati merchants

Anne Garrigue

The literati merchants

A vernacular architecture

Reflecting the Confucian value system

Villages influenced by feng shui

Clan temples

Conserving this heritage

The contrasted image of colonial Tahiti: between English and French-speaking artists

Philippe Bachimon

Index of names

Foreword: Réseau Asie (Asia Network), a network of the future

Maurice Aymard

September 2005

Réseau Asie, founded and created under the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (MSH) in June 2001, is now more than four years old. It will hold its second congress at the end of September 2005. This will be a good opportunity to remind ourselves of the initial ambitions of its founders, to evaluate how far it has come and the progress to be made, to clearly assess the difficulties encountered and to reflect on potential, possible or desirable directions in which the Network should take.

This small group was created in 2001 by Jean-François Sabouret, who brought together Jean-Luc Domenach, Alain Peyraube, and, from the MSH, Jean-Claude Thivolle, Gilles Tarabout, Jean-Luc Racine and myself, starting with a simple mission statement of setting out goals for the Network to attain.

Its statement highlighted the importance, quality and seniority of French (and, mainly, French-speaking) research on Asia on its dispersion and division. On the one hand, we have numerous researchers, research centres and specialised institutions established in France and Asia, old and very high-level scientific traditions, journals and book collections that are internationally reputed. On the other hand, we have an institutional dispersion and a division between the specialists of different countries or Asian regions. This has clouded the visibility of research, limited the transversal, global or comparative approaches, and also restricted the possibilities of exchange and cooperation between well-known specialists of cultures, religions, languages, societies and political systems, and the non-specialists including lawyers, economists, social scientists, political scientists or historians on Asia. These group of people felt the need to include a continent in their system of reference, which they clearly knew would dominate the first half of the 21st century, and perhaps beyond, due to its economic and demographic weight.

The goals, which they were aiming for were a result of this statement. It was important to bring together the researchers interested in Asia in a network, making a list as exhaustive as possible, and creating conditions for working together. The purpose of which had to explore new directions of research in a non-competitive attitude that existing institutions in their current practices had not yet been able to do, and to, of course, participate in this with and for the researchers themselves.

The first stage was centred on creating an online directory of all French and French-speaking researchers (around 1,500 people).

The second stage was to organise a congress every two years that would consist of workshops based on the proposals received and which would be open to all, particulary, to young researchers.

The third stage included organising or assisting in the organisation of transversal meetings on common issues, in partnership with other institutions, bringing together scholars working on different Asian countries, or specialists and non-specialists of Asia.

The fourth stage opened this French-speaking Network to the world, promoting partnerships with similar networks that already exist or that will be set up in neighbouring European countries. Through its historical experience, Europe benefits from a long and rich tradition of Asian studies, which allow it to gather, capitalise and transform this experience in order to face the demands and challenges of the 21st century.

Finally, th fifth stage consisted of developing the international mobility of scholars, by inviting not only well-known specialists from Asia working in their own countries or in foreign universities, but also, young doctorate and post-doctorate candidates from Asian universities for long (academic) stays in France.

These five objectives were partially reached, but there is still much left for us to do. The creation of a directory is already well underway. It includes the references of more than 1,300 scholars and it will be directly accessible on the website. The Network’s second congress, two years after the first congress, in September 2003, will be held from 28th to 30th September 2005 at the Centre of International Conferences, and for its final session, in the large EHESS amphitheatre, 105 Boulevard Raspail. It will be open to all and the programme can be consulted on the Network’s website: www.reseau-asie.com.

Initial contact was made with Casa Asia in Barcelona and its Director, Ambassador Ion de la Riva and with Professor Carlo G. Cereti of the University of Rome. A wider network is envisaged bringing together scholars from other European countries. The Hermes programme that was launched in 2005, under the initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs whose management was entrusted to the MSH, and with the help of the Ministry of Research and CNRS, they will invite fourteen post-doctorates from China, India and Indonesia in autumn 2005, for a period of six months. They will be welcomed into a French research team, be they specialists or non-specialists of Asia. There still remains the task of coming up with initiatives to achieve the third stage: this will be one of the objectives of the next congress.

Much has already been achieved, given the means that the Network had to begin with, but there is still much to do, considering the size of the task. That which was accomplished was only possible with the close collaboration of the three main forces. From the very beginning, this ambitious project enjoyed the complicity and support of the Network with which it joined forces and enabled the project to proceed. The institutional support of the Ministry of National Education, the Ministry of Research and the Ministry of External Affairs has made it possible to have the staff and the financial means to carry out the work. Finally, it is thanks to Jean-François Sabouret’s relentless dedication, constant enthusiasm and organisation of a small team that the Network has come this far.

The work of the Réseau Asie meets a growing need. From the beginning, it was welcomed and supported by the MSH whose mission is to provide a framework for such projects, which in order to succeed, require the scientific independence of researchers and total neutrality of the institution that they choose as a framework for their collective work. This means that the Réseau Asie could even one day branch off from the MSH if other institutions prove to be capable of taking over in the same attitude, without necessarily wanting to claim ownership of it.

The Réseau Asie is everyone’s network and should remain that way. It needs the support of one and all to succeed.

Author

Maurice Aymard

École des hautes études en sciences sociales

Introduction: Asia going from strength to strength or is the world on the verge of a new era?

Jean-François Sabouret

June 2011

Asia does not exist and nevertheless it is increasingly present in the international arena. Asia is a controversial concept, just like the fact that “Eastern World” is inaccurate and is often used to describe anything “in the East”, which is not the Western world. What is more different than Tashkent or Ashgabat in Central Asia and Tokyo or Seoul in North-East Asia? Europe and Asia cohabit on the same tectonic plate. So be it, we shall use this term and refer to Asia as the non-Western world whose global dynamism attracts our attention daily.

From the mid-19th century, Japan openly embarked on rapid Westernisation to be able to fend off Western appetites in North-East Asia. The Japanese were perfectly aware of the Opium War in China (1839-1842) and of its outcome: the defeat of China against the British gunboats. It did not take them long to understand that Japan was not able to defend itself. Many foreign ships had been cruising off the Japanese coasts for some years, and the relatively controlled exchanges with Holland via the Dejima access lock in Nagasaki, which had been going on for more than two centuries, were probably on their last legs. Shogunal power and the political changes brought about by the Meiji period in 1868 generated a similar thought, that of modernising by all means and as quickly as possible’ building “a rich country” with “a strong military”. One of the other major debates at the time in Japan was Westernisation, while preserving its Japanese soul, according to the motto of the Meiji era, “Japanese mind, Western knowledge” (wakon-yôsai).

One cannot fail to notice that the student of the Western world–Japan at the time–has successfully emulated its teachers in terms of military aggression and colonisation: Taiwan (1895), Korea (1905), Manchuria (1937). It took some thirty years for Japan to modernise and to become one of the main powers in the region through war, defeat, American occupation, economic rebirth that was partially due to external warfare: Korean War (1950-1953), Vietnam War (1954-1975) and a profitable strategy in research and development. In 1965, Japan became the third economic power in the world and then the second at the beginning of the 1980s. At one time, Japan was even considered to become the world leader, “Japan as number one”. Unfortunately, the land bubble and the downturn surfaced in the 1990s, but Japan had, however, managed to remain the second largest until 2010. Today, it ranks third, overtaken by China. Will the events, which took place in Tôhoku in the northeast on 11th March (earthquake, tsunami and nuclear threat) make Japan drop even further down the ranks or enable it, on the contrary, to embark on large-scale projects in promising sectors such as renewable energy?

In any case, Japan has clearly answered the question as to whether modernisation was possible without Westernisation. All the countries of the “Asian Region” have realised that Asia is decidedly going from strength to strength today.

It has been calculated that the gross domestic product of China and India at the end of the 18th century accounted for more than 40% of the world’s total. Colonisation, wars and many political events in the 19th and 20th century have put a dampener on Asia’s development as a whole. Today, Asia is making a brilliant comeback on the political scene, in terms of military, industry, research and development, creation and even philosophy. No sector exclusively belongs to the West anymore.

In the 1980s, before the awakening of Deng Xiaoping’s China, Asian countries accounted for approximately 14% of the world’s GDP and 38% for Europe. In 2010, Asia and the EU-27 are almost on an economic par with Asia producing 25% and Europe 28%. It may be assumed that in a few years Asia time, will overtake the European Union and North America (29% in 2010).

It is not easy to describe the dynamism in Asia and the Pacific region in time and space, unless one decides to draw large frescos, with mixed fortunes. Braudel is second to none! More humbly, for the past 10 years, the Asia and Pacific Network has been weaving a patient web, by patching together snapshots of the various fields of research and the different knowledge corpus of specialists and experts on Asia and the Pacific region.

The aim is to show the diversity and the wealth of French and French-speaking research. Researchers on Asia and the Pacific region amount to more than 1,800 individuals, making France one of the countries of the EU with the highest number of researchers working on the region. However, the aim is also to express concern: there is a large number of researchers reaching retirement age (the “grandfather boom”). Future generations are coming forward and are rather talented, but when taking the relay, the State may be ill-advised to adopt a hands-off policy: research sectors might be cast aside just when this part of the world, which will probably seek to take over the world, needs to be understood.

Will this globalisation take place smoothly without armed confrontations? Will the Western world accept to reduce the span of its economic, industrial and military power and leave room for other emerging forces? Or, on the contrary, will it conversely seize this opportunity to try and fulfill the dreams of everlasting peace praised by Kant and integrate into the knowledge corpora, a representative proportion of all civilizations that history has all too often neglected, in terms of their wealth and contribution.

The world has turned upside down at the beginning of this century. Therefore, it is rather important to ponder the consequences on the future of the Western world and the lives of its inhabitants.

Around a hundred texts in French attest the quality and the vitality of research and knowledge of our country and French-speaking people; a number that is not so impressive considering the number of specialists and experts in Asia and the Pacific region. Far more would be necessary and we will continue along these lines by publishing a new text every month on the Asia Network website. Several reasons account for the decision to publish these texts in the traditional form of a book, which may be surprising as they have already appeared on the web. The first is to thank all the authors who have taken part in this smooth-running adventure, month after months for ten years, which has enabled us to piece together this corpus of knowledge. The second, the generation-related reason lies in the fact that information on the web is fragile and may be deleted with a single click; power and fragility are interlaced in a kind of technological oxymoron. The publishing value of books is still reliable, if not limited, but the intent is also to refer readers to the extensive and multifaceted works of the researchers.

Finally, I wish to thank whole-heartedly Maurice Aymard, Alain Peyraube, Jean-Luc Domenach, Jean-Luc Racine and the whole team of the Asia Network for standing by me throughout this long process in which there is still so much left to be achieved…

Author

Jean-François Sabouret

Centre national de la recherche scientifique

Part one. Regional dynamics and globalisation

Globalisation or Asianisation?

Nayan Chanda

January 2011

Over the past three decades, supporters and critics of globalisation considered it a synonym for Americanisation. America’s “Inc.”, indicative of this American globalisation, illustrated its dominance over the world, as shown by the omnipresent golden arches of McDonalds and the bright red billboards proclaiming that “Things go better with Coke”. While the arches and Coca-cola billboards with different slogans are still there, the fizz has gone out of Amercanised globalisation.

Today the new champions of globalisation are yesterday’s poor developing countries, especially Asia–led by China and India. “Made in China” products fill the supermarket shelves of the West, reminding one that China is the world’s second largest exporter, the second biggest economy and the top creditor. Long known for its backwardness, Indian software companies now run the world’s back offices and Indian billionaires are on a shopping spree in the developed West. The rise of Asia as the new “globaliser” is nothing short of spectacular, yet in a historical perspective, it is not that surprising. The two most populous countries that dominated the world economy for over a millennium until the 18th century are regaining ground after a brief moment away.

China and India have long played a critical role in the interconnection process, known as “globalisation”. The riparian civilizations, endowed with rich agriculture, natural resources and large populations with manufacturing skills had supplied the world the means of a better life – from spices to silk and jewellery to porcelain. When, on the morning of 21st May 1498 the Portuguese adventurer Vasco da Gama sailed into Calicut, India, he was dazzled. He described the port as “bursting with merchandise of every kind, because of its maritime traffic with other lands from China to the Nile”. Chinese port cities from Guangzhou to Huating (later renamed Shanghai) too were bustling places of commerce, as was the entrepot of Malacca where the Chinese and Indian worlds met. Large communities of foreign merchants flocked there, not so different from today’s modern businessmen and women, who have relocated to Shanghai and Beijing.

On the subject of the Quanzhou or Zaitun port, Marco Polo wrote that, “It is the port where all ships from India come loaded with expensive goods and a multitude of extremely valuable precious stones and big rare pearls... in this port there is a constant movement of such vast amounts of goods and precious stones, which it is a marvelous thing to see”. Before the days of maritime trade, the final destination on the Silk Road terminus – the city of Changan (today’s Xian) – was the largest urban centre in the world with nearly two million inhabitants including traders of many faiths for example Muslims, Jews, Nestorian Christians and Buddhists.

Asia’s luxury goods drew in European traders who often felt like children in a sweet shop without any money in their pockets. Asian traders were not interested in European trinkets and fur; they wanted precious metal in exchange of their products. It was only after Christopher Columbus’ incidental arrival in the New World that Europeans came to discover bountiful supplies of Inca gold and silver to be traded in Asia for these luxury goods. In order to work the mines and plantations in the New World, Europeans turned to Africa for slaves. In a triangular trade, Latin American silver bought tea, spices, porcelain and textiles from Asia, also it bought Indian clothes in exchange for African slaves who were made to work in the sugarcane and coffee plantations to supply those commodities to European consumers. Europe imported more than 1,700 tons of gold and 73,000 tons of silver from the New World, about a third of which found its way to China and India.

India’s steel ingot was highly sought after for making the infamous Damascus swords. China’s modern foundries supplied goods that were then sent to Europe. Historian Robert Hartwell estimated that iron production in China in 1078 was approximately 150,000 tons (per year) more than the entire production of iron and steel in Europe in 1700. It is not surprising that according to the calculations of the historian, Angus Madison, in 1700, China and India together produced nearly half of the world’s gross domestic product.

Asia’s reign over world commerce and cultural exchange gradually gave way to Europe’s resurgence, its industrial revolution and its military power. The British mills running on steam power broke India’s monopoly over the cotton textile trade. India grew weaker as British colonial rulers forced farmers to grow indigo and opium for exportation and swamped China with opium in exchange of Chinese exports. Wounded, an inward looking imperial China and colonial India retreated from the world’s gaze. Even after independence, brutal socialism in China and a socialistic-bureaucratic state in India prolonged their under-development.

Asia’s revival began in the 1980s with Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in China and those of Manmohan Singh a decade later in India. The reforms removed the obstacles that held these countries back from using their millennia old skills for production. As doors opened to foreign capital and technology, and economy opened to private companies, China enjoyed a growth spurt–an annual GDP increase of 9.6% during two decades. Foreign businesses flocked to China to take advantage of its skilled cheap labour, which at the same time, turned the country into the world’s factory. Representing less than 2% of the world’s share of manufacturing, China rose to 8.3% in 2004, becoming the world’s biggest supplier of clothes, toys, shoes and consumer electronics. In 2010, China overtook Japan as the world’s second largest economy, after beating Germany to become the world’s leading exporter. China’s share of world export has risen from less than 1% in the 1970s to over 12% last year (2010). In the same period, the US share dropped nearly 14% to just over 8%.

To fuel its export, China has scoured the world for energy, minerals and other natural resources and has become the largest aid donor to Africa. By 2035, China will be consuming a fifth of all global energy; it already buys 22% of Australian raw material exports, 12% of Brazil’s and 10% of South Africa’s exports. The impact of China’s export has been estimated to be a record reserve of 3 trillion dollars, 900 billion dollars of which includes US debt. A wealthy China has emerged as an aid in a financial crisis. The Chinese purchase of Greek government bonds helped to deflate the country’s recent crisis. If further proof was needed for China’s rise as a global economic superpower, it came in December 2010, when Portuguese officials travelled to China to seek its help in avoiding a Greek-styles crisis.

Along with China’s impressive economic growth, its culture too, is enjoying a new lease of life. The Chinese government has helped set up some 500 Confucius Centres to teach Chinese in 80 countries. According to Beijing, 40 million people worldwide are learning Chinese.

India’s recent rise stemmed from the 1991 crisis, which forced India to discard its “license raj” and open its door to the world. India’s longstanding lead in mathematics was an advantage as the Silicon Valley revolution opened up unprecedented business opportunities. The first of these opportunities arose from the Millennium “bug” scare and India’s programming help was sought by hundreds of foreign companies. Just as Western companies who flocked to China for efficient and low cost manufacturing and assembly, they found India’s skills in English, maths and engineering ideal for running back offices and supplying components and offering services from call centres to research centres. Cheap fibre optic connections across oceans provided the new highway for business in the services.

Although India is far behind China, it is one of the fastest growing economies and is the 12th largest in the world. Its steady economic growth has filled its coffers and encouraged rich companies to go hunting for assets abroad – totalling over 100 billion US dollars invested by Indian businesses outside India in just four years of the last decade. As it regains its industrial capacity, India’s demographic advantage of having a young population (while China’s greying population begins to retire) might help India to become another of the world’s factories.

Although it has not caught on yet, soon globalisation could be called “Asianisation”.

Author

Nayan Chanda

YaleGlobal Online

The success of Asian products in the 16th to 18th century Europe

Philippe Haudrère

June 2006

Europeans have been acquainted with products from Asia for a long time, since well before the 16th century. Wealthy Romans appreciated spices, particularly pepper, and silk. During the Middle Ages, the “Silk Road” was in use. Although the technique of breeding silkworms had reached the West...