Asian century is here to stay: Kishore Mahbubani

Singapore

THE Asian century is nigh upon us, with the inexorable march of economic powerhouses such as China, India - and to a smaller but no less significant extent, Indonesia - well underway, public policy mandarin Kishore Mahbubani said on Saturday.

And the rise of the Asian society to the pre-eminent influence of the US and Europe in past centuries is yet unassailable, said Professor Mahbubani, a former diplomat and dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, a postgraduate school at the National University of Singapore.

He was delivering the keynote address at a retirement seminar jointly organised by The Business Times and Aggregate Asset Management.

"For more than 1,800 of the last 2,000 years, China and India were always the two largest economies in the world . . . the past 200 years have been a major historical…