Asia Enters the New Millennium | Essay

Although millennial dates are arbitrary marks on the calendar, humanity’s fascina­tion with such dates remains strong as it throws off certain metaphysical sparks. The approach of the year 2000 (by the western calendar) produces an unusual in­terest for it reflects humanity’s perennial fascination with zeroes.

People have an ir­resistible curiosity regarding the shape of future beyond this magical date. Futuristic predictions in several books and articles have focused on the year 2000 for nearly half a century now, and the volume of such predictions keeps on growing.

In line with this tradition, therefore, it may be permissible to speculate on the likely trends of development and change that might shape the Asian scene as the new millennium approaches. As a broad initial generalization, however, it is safe to assume that whatever might be locked in the womb of future, it is very likely that the century to come (as indeed the centu­ries to follow) will be complex, fast-paced and turbulent for most Asian nations.

The accelerating march of technology is clearly responsible for much of this, but the pace of change is international. As it gathers fur­ther momentum, the nations of Asia are bound to be caught up in the web of this fast-paced global change. Although the un­seen will figure prominently in shaping the texture of Asia’s future, there are number of clearly discernible trends that are on the horizon.

Increasing Population Pressures:

Population pressures have been building up nearly everywhere in Asia, especially during the last century, more so in the two larger Asian nations of India and China, which collectively account for over 2 bil­lion of Asia’s 3.6 billion people. Although the rate of population growth in China has gone down during the last few decades and is almost one-half that of India (population growth rates for India and China are 1.8 and 0.9 percent per year respectively) both nations together are adding more than 30 million human beings to the world’s popu­lation annually.

Even if the rates of population increase were to fall in future the increased pressure of additional human beings will undoubtedly create enormous problems of overcrowding, environmental pollution and in general, lowering of the standard of living. Japan, where popula­tion growth is among the lowest in the world, the problem is of a different type, that of “graying society” which will surely tax the adult segment that will have to shoulder the burden of the “unproductive” (or less productive) aged population.

Many futurists have predicted that the rich nations will generally get richer and the poor poorer in the 21st century. In their view in order to rise to a level of prosperity, a developing country must achieve decades of economic growth while simultaneously holding its population sta­ble.

According to them few Asian nations will manage that trick successfully. Japan and Singapore (the developing nations in the 1930s) have been able to become pros­perous after decades of sustained efforts. Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have been, for some time trying to emulate and duplicate Japan’s example. Applying the futurist’s logic to China and India, the two largest of Asia’s nations may take a much longer time to be industrial gi­ants like Japan.

Their populations are too large and the gross domestic product too small (China’s per capita gross product is $860 and is expected to reach $1,500 by the year 2010). In 2000, India’s population has also crossed the one billion mark. Its gross domestic per capita is expected to grow from the present $370 to $820. Therefore, the dynamics of the 21st century presents a gloomy outlook for developing countries like India.

The Middle East nations do not face economic problems yet, since their population base is too small. But their economies depend on a single resource (oil). The volatility of oil market in the world and the non-renewable nature of this resource make the oil-rich nations highly vulnerable to unrestricted future population growth.

Environmental Concerns:

One of the trends most certain to explode dramati­cally in the years immediately ahead is the deterioration of the natural environment, and the need to clean up the mess that decade of neglect has created. Increasing urbanization and industrialization have blanketed the skies of larger cities with at­mospheric smog.

Chemical pollutants emitted by an ever increasing number of automobiles and industries in and around such cities as Beijing, Delhi, Tehran, and Tokyo-Yokohama (and many others) have created massive environmental problems threatening health and safety of the peo­ple.

Centuries of indiscriminate cutting of trees in the densely populated areas to clear land for cultivation has been univer­sal all over the continent. With most of Asia’s good land already under plow, a population of close to 5 billion in the latter part of the next century would probably have to make do with less than half the ar­able land per capita that exists today. That would set the stage for environmental dis­aster.

The realization of the fragility and vul­nerability of the continent’s most familiar and cherished ecosystems—the Ganga, the Caspian, the Himalaya—and the drive to reverse or even halt the environmental degradation caused by disturbance to the ecosystem by the removal of tree cover is not strong as yet in Asia, but is likely to grow in the years ahead.

As the nations of Central Asia emerge from shadows of secrecy after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the full extent of envi­ronmental mischief in which economic goals has been a predominant objective is gradually becoming known. The pollution from the overuse of insecticide, and chemi­cal fertilization for irrigation have contaminated wide areas in the basins of the Syr and Amu rivers, as well as the envi­ronmental pollution created by the nuclear testing and of dumping of nuclear “waste” have had disastrous effects on the environ­ment on the health and livelihood of the human population around Aral and Caspian littorals.

The challenge to western nations of assisting in the rebuilding of Central Asia’s impoverished economies, as well as these nations’ own efforts to be­come competitive in the 21st century, will be compounded by the enormous costs of environmental cleanup, and by the burden of building their industrial sector. At any rate, it can be safely predicted that environment will be one of the trou­bling issues in the years ahead.

Growth of Nationalism:

Nearly all Asian countries contain numerous ethnic and linguistic minority groups that are be­coming increasingly assertive in claiming their cultural, political, economic and ter­ritorial rights. Many of the countries in South and Southeast Asia attained inde­pendence in the mid and late 1940s and early 1950s. At the same time they were trying to bring tranquility and territorial consolidation, they will run a serious risk of becoming more fragmented as national­ist pressures mount.

While pressure groups are actively or­ganized to influence government policy everywhere, they have exhibited militancy and a violent streak. In India the Sikhs and the Kashmiri Muslims; in Indonesia the Ti­morese; the “Tamil Tigers” in Sri Lanka; and the Kurds in Iraq have been engaged in bloody confrontation with the central gov­ernments for the creation of independent “homelands” for their cultures, and ethnic­ity.

India has been able to defuse the problem of the separatists, at least for the time being, but pacification in other coun­tries is a long way off. The nationalist movements in China, in the provinces of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet (Xi-zang) have been put down by force, although the central government has at­tempted to defuse the nationalist threats by devolving substantial power from cen­tral to regional administration and by recognizing the distinctive character of various minority groups.

With the collapse of the monolithic political structures of the Soviet Union in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajik­istan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) the strength of many “hidden” nationalistic forces has emerged. Each central admini­stration in this region has under its control a number of distinct and vocal minorities, many of which have been deprived of their linguistic and cultural identity over long periods of authoritarian rule.

Besides the indigenous ethnic groups, the central Asian nations contain several non-indige­nous groups, such as the Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, etc. The introduc­tion of Russian as an “official language” during the Soviet control was never ac­cepted by a vast majority of the population. Linguistic “Russification” will surely be reversed in favor of indigenous languages as the nationalist sentiments be­come more strident in the near future.

An emerging factor of increasing im­portance is the growing strength of the Islamic religious tradition that was sup­pressed during the Soviet rule, and that is now likely to affect social and political configuration of the nations of Central Asia. The religious aspirations that lay dor­mant over long periods of authoritarian Soviet rule are now beginning to assert themselves, and these nations are trying to forge new regional connections with neighboring Islamic countries.

Growing Regional Integration:

The push toward increasing economic and po­litical integration within Asian countries started much later than on the other conti­nents but seems by now to have gained momentum. The earliest regional associa­tion was the League of Arab States (more generally known as the Arab League) founded in 1945.

It is a loose federation de­signed to strengthen ties linking the Arab States, and to coordinate their policies (supposedly political). Having failed to bring harmony among the mutually sus­pecting or hostile nations, it has never functioned smoothly. It has no political or economic agenda except to create some kind of unity among the Arab States.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) which was established in 1960 has clearly defined goal to link na­tions whose main source of export earnings is petroleum; it aims to unify and coordinate members’ petroleum policies and safeguard their interests.

The organiza­tion cuts across regional boundaries; seven of Its eleven members are Asian countries mostly from the Middle East, the remain­ing are from Africa and South America, such as Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Venezuela. The Arab nation-members of the OPEC separately formed an associa­tion in 1968, named the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), which is merely duplication of OPEC, designed only for the Arab coun­tries.

In other regions of Asia, the Associa­tion of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) which started in 1989 is the most important formal grouping of coun­tries within the Pacific Basin. Its core members until recently were Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singa­pore and Brunei. Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos were admitted in the mid and late 1990s.

The Pacific Basin is, in population size and territorial extent, larger and more heterogeneous than Europe. The main purpose of the association is to enhance trading and economic links within the Pa­cific community. On much the same lines, the nations of South Asia also formed an economic association in 1985 in order to improve regional cooperation. This union, known as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), aimed primarily at developing improved trading links within the region and forging closer economic cooperation. The SAARC is at a nascent stage of its development.

In recent years, contradictory forces within South Asia and the Pacific Basin have both helped and hindered progress towards increased integration, although, on balance, they would seem to indicate slow, but steady move towards greater in­terdependence. Among Southeast Asian nations, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand have shown a consistent economic growth and political stability.

The problem posed by countries such as Indonesia is the uncer­tainty that is undoubtedly created by the absence for a process for achieving the re­placement of one regime by another. In South Asia, democracy is relatively stable in India, but political turmoil in the other nations have already weakened the eco­nomic links which these nations are struggling to develop.

Likely Trends in Southwest and Central Asia:

The existence of oil, a vi­tal resource on which much of the future development of the world depends has invested the Persian Gulf and Caspian Ba­sin nations in Central Asia, with
enormous economic and political power. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the growing links between the Middle East and Central Asia and South Asia has cata­pulted the region into a globally strategic area and a source of conflict.

Oil has trans­formed much of the character of the region, and has made it a focus of aggres­sive interests of major external powers as well as enormously exacerbated tensions within the region. The fact that demand for oil has been rising, especially from the industrializing Asian nations, makes the region vitally significant not only for the major world powers but for the rest of the world as well.

Another developing scenario, unre­lated to oil, is the growing militant Islamic nationalism in the Gulf States and in Cen­tral Asia which is likely to affect the political texture of the region with implica­tions beyond the Gulf region.

In South Asia By virtue of her size, and historical importance, India has played a vital role in shaping the lives and for­tunes of the region, and is likely to remain a dominance force in South Asia. Pakistan and Bangladesh were a part of British India prior to 1947, and the kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan have remained within India’s hegemony.

The region encompasses di­verse religions, languages, castes, and cultures. Pluralism within it has often re­sulted in ethnic conflicts and civil wars. The democratic structures designed by the founding fathers of these nations (except­ing the kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan) have come under heavy stresses and strains, often threatened by fragmented polity. In­dia’s democracy has been a “functioning democracy,” elsewhere authoritarian rules have been the rule.

Except for Pakistan, South Asian na­tions initially adopted semi-socialistic form of economic policies, but gradually moved away from central planning. India and Pakistan moved to economic liberalization in the mid-1990s and replaced central plan­ning with market economy.

Although compared to East Asian and Southeast Asian economies, the region’s growth has been anemic, the path of economic liberalization adopted lately promises higher growth. Population pressures have been a major problem, but thanks to the success­ful green revolution, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh can feed their people now. The social, demographic, economic and political problems, however, will con­tinue to affect South Asia’s development, and the economic outlook appears mod­estly promising.

In Southeast Asia:

Historically, South­east Asian nations are relatively young; most are still struggling towards peace and stability. With the exception of Thailand, none has had the sustained experience of an established, dominant, indigenous po­litical order. There has historically been no regionally dominant state, such as India or China, or in another setting, Brazil.

With the passing of colonial rule and with a newer order trying to emerge. Southeast Asia remains in a state of political, social and economic flux. An exception is the tiny city-state of Singapore, where the ex­periment of a democratic government, parliamentary traditions, and rigorous eco­nomic reconstruction based on private enterprise has brought political stability and prosperity.

Economic integration within the re­gion developed by such groupings as ASEAN, and SAARC is still at a nascent state and remains feeble. However, South­east Asian economies, particularly those of Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines adopted capitalism as the organizing basis of economic life and became integrated into the global economies.

The results were spectacular the economies of each of these nations grew at rates between 8 and 12 percent a year during the 1980s, earning them the nickname of “Asian Ti­gers”. The sharp currency crises that gripped these economies in 1997 can be at­tributed to underlying institutional weaknesses, and can hopefully be ad­dressed.

In East Asia:

The Pacific Rim Asian nations, Korea and Taiwan in particular, have shown remarkable growth during the past two decades, and to a lesser degree China has tried to duplicate their perform­ance. Their growth rates have ranged between 6-10 during this period. This was made possible as Korea and Taiwan adopted essentially capitalistic develop­ment strategy in the 1960s and 1970s, and in a much-modified form by China more recently.

Japan’s extraordinary growth in the 20th century was of course the precur­sor of the other three nations, although its productive capacity may well be reaching a saturation point. As the competition from the U.S., industrialized Western Europe and the newly-industrializing Asian na­tions intensify; this scarce-resource nation faces increased pressure on its growth. However, Japan’s international economic power is well established, and the nation is expected to play an increasingly important role within the Pacific Basin.

The sharp currency crises that gripped Korea, Hong Kong, and even Japan have sent shock waves in these nations. The eco­nomic salvation of these nations lies in eradicating institutional and structural weaknesses (such as corruption, insuffi­cient banking regulations, populist policies, etc.) that they are prone to.