ABSTRACT
While Europe engrossed in overcoming the sovereign debt crisis and its repercussions on the euro, Asia was able for some time to decouple from the crisis and maintain double digit GDP growth rates (China, India as well as Singapore, Taiwan) thereby widening the relative gap in economic power. The Asia-Pacific century seemed to have become a reality, with China in the lead, contrary to the 1980s, when Japan was on the top of what was then called the ‘flying geese’ pattern of the Asian tigers being in hot pursuit to catch up with the Japanese goose. The United States reacted in 2011 with its ‘pivot’ or rebalancing, focusing on the Asian powerhouse after having spent time, energy and money on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then Secretary of State Clinton’s programme to turn the twenty-first Asian-Pacific century into an Amer ican one (Clinton 2011) is also a challenge for the EU, at least in the areas of trade and economics (see also the chapter by Islam in this volume). At the same time, Russia has to cope for the first time with a China that is economically stronger than her (or the Soviet Union before). Russia is trying to carve out a role for itself in the region, although it has as its main goal the development of its Far East and Siberia. It is also the first time that China and Japan are strong concurrently. The nineteenth century was largely shaped by Europe and the twentieth century saw the US’ hegemony after two Europe-induced catastrophes. This leads to the question: Will the twenty-first century be recorded as the Asian-Pacific century or the Chinese one? As early as 1987, Paul Kennedy reflected on Asia’s rise after the millennium change in his ‘Rise and Fall of the Great Powers’. History tells us that we are not in an entirely new situation. Asia was a main factor in politics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries albeit in a non-globalised world, losing out to Europe in the nineteenth century, and falling lower in the twentieth century, not least because of the political upheavals in China. By the beginning of the twenty-first century the tide had turned and Asia is coming back.
