A sense of where Asian unity is

ASIA: "In the shade of the banyan tree: It's time for a column about half the world's people," by Banyan, The Economist, 11 April 2009.

Saying it's both premature and about time for the mag to have an Asian-focused column to go with its US-centric (Lexington) and EU-centric (Charlemagne) ones (Bagehot writes primarily about the UK), The Economist decides it's time to start tracking Asia's progress toward some larger union.

Its current perspective:

In Asia, an insipid collection of regional and sub-regional clubs amounts to something far short of a continental project.

Still, after only introducing an Asia section in the mag in 1987, this move recognizes that there has been a lot of progress since then, meaning this is a trajectory that must be tracked in terms of global structure (26% of global GDP in 1990 and 38% in 2007).

Key to the analysis:

Trade is already promoting economic integration. Two-fifths of Asian exports, and rising, are intra-regional even if half that share forms part of a global supply-chain anchored in the West. But the political process may in the end prove even more profound. The region must see that the simultaneous rise of two continent-sized big powers is peaceful.

The stakes? "Failure would put paid to notions of an Asia century."

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

The Economist will have its hands full on the Asian portfolio for several reasons. Less transparency. Unreliable statistics and demographic info. Yet there is a way that by a reverse mirror the rise of the Chinese condominium can occur? Just watch the trade-related statistics of those within the condominium--China, Japan, the Koreas, Burma, Viet Nam, Indonesia, Australia, and maybe India and Pakistan and those with the rest of the world. Be interesting to watch as the percentages of population, economic activity, and other "soft" power arrangements really start to make the US and EU and Africa and S. America look like they have been outplayed and out thought by the members of the condominium.