Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Parag Khanna says there is no more important region of the world for us to better understand than Asia, and thus, we cannot afford to keep getting Asia so wrong. He says Asia’s complexity has led to common misdiagnoses, namely that western thinking on Asia conflates the entire region with China, predicts imminent World War III around every corner and regularly forecasts debt-driven collapse for the region’s major economies. Khanna says that, in reality, the region is experiencing a confident new wave of growth led by younger societies from India to the Philippines, that nationalist leaders have put aside territorial disputes in favor of integration, and today’s infrastructure investments are the platform for the next generation of digital innovation. Khanna asserts that in the 19th century, the world was Europeanized; in the 20th century, it was Americanized; and now, in the 21st century, the world is being Asianized. He says far greater than just China, the new Asian system taking shape is a multi-civilizati