What the Asian Thought-Leadership Mafia Gets Wrong
A Q&A with author Vasuki Shastry on the real challenges facing Asia once you get past the usual bromides.
Don’t ask Asia’s thought leaders for the word on the street. They don’t know.
Photographer: Akio Kon/BloombergAsia is the future of the world economy! The growth is so impressive, the opportunities so marvelous! If I had five Indonesian rupiah for every time an executive or investor has asserted these sentiments, I could retire in comfort tomorrow.
While this view has some truth, it misses important shifts in business and politics. Indeed, increases in gross domestic product the past several decades have been impressive. The pace of expansion has slowed since the 1990s, however, and never fully recovered from the financial crisis that struck Asia in the latter part of the decade. More recently, trade conflict between Washington and Beijing is eroding one of the key pillars of Asia’s success: the manufacturing supply chains centered on China and fed by components from around the region, especially Southeast Asia. Birth rates are plummeting, the ranks of seniors are swelling, and rulers appear increasingly distant from the ruled.