The 20th century was the century of America.
And the 21st century will be the century of Asia....
...", stated ambassador Wu Jianmin, Chinese Foreign Ministry, at the Harvard Conference for Asian and International Relations 2010 in Singapore. Will he remain right?
We don't know yet, but all evidences point to that direction - the last ten years, economical, belonged to Asia. And if we look at it's people, more are to come. Nowadays challenges are not easy to deal with: The explosion of the markets in 2007/8, new communication ways and global interconnection tools such as facebook and skype, in order with a turn of the whole “western world” towards a concept for peace and international law conceptions for “true” justice. The top of all the confusion: That awful feeling that not one stone is standing on another.
Asians, however, have found their ways to deal with those challenges: Education. Parents save a life-long in order to guarantee their children a good education, they send them abroad and provide them with the tools necessary to meet an interconnected, global economy within an international society. Where is Europe? Still slowly in motion, tardily realizing their powerful Euro goes down facing the same problems as the United States with their dollar ever since the great depression.
From a personal point of view, I must admit I did not believe in what serious crisis we find ourselves until my stay in Asia the last two weeks. The open-minded friendliness reminded me of “the American way” of communication, going along with brilliant well-educated undergraduates, aged 18, 19, 20 up to 28. However, one would be wrong if estimating what I am trying to say is that Europeans or Americans are not as smart as Asians. Completely mistaken! But my point is, the advantage Asians take, is that they don’t take it for granted and learned, that not only the “main subjects” such as economics, business and law are those that matter, but a broad education in all related fields. First of all languages, secondly cultural and intercultural knowledge - they know exactly how to interact with Africans, Europeans, Latin-Americans and the differences - and last but not least subjects as history, politics, environmental programs, technical education and so on. The list is endless.On the other hand still the most part of East Asian Countries remain uneducated, oppressed and underpaid. But they start organizing themselves! As main topic in “The economist” from August 7th, “China’s rising powers” that dealt with the unhappy working class pointed out, a group that has nothing to lose has the strongest power. It may not be the time yet, but with brilliant leaders, such as everywhere around in Asia, the peoples could easily outplay both, Europe and the United States.
Watch out Western Society! Don’t underestimate the power of the rising continent of the 21st century. Let’s work together. Let’s use both, the traditional, well-known and gentle European way with the American “sky is the limit”-dream that fist of all hard work leads to success and combine those two with the new Asian approach to innovation, education and leadership. One nation alone cannot succeed anymore, for only together we are strong. And then we may finally say: Yes, we can!
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