The Myth of the Asian Century

The claim that the twenty-first century will be Asian, just as the twentieth century was American, is often made but seldom examined. Yet this axiom is not just simplistic, it could also encourage the very rivalry that most threatens Asia’s security and prosperity: between the United States and China. Asia is certainly playing a more prominent role in global geopolitics, just as Europe once did and America still does. The purpose of this Paper is to unpack the many layers concealed by the phrase ‘the Asian Century’. The future is too complex to be characterised by any one continent.

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Introduction

Asia in the 21st century figures as prominently in global geopolitics and the world economy as Europe once did and America still does. This is an incontrovertible fact. I do not dispute it. Why then do I maintain that the idea of an Asian 21st century is a myth? Essentially because the metaphor – which is, at best, all the ‘Asian century’ amounts to – obscures much more than it illuminates. By the vividness of the image it evokes, by the insights that unexpected comparisons stimulate, a metaphor ought to add depth to our understanding. But the idea of an ‘Asian century’ is not particularly useful in advancing understanding of Asia’s place in the world and its implications.

Today, a quarter of the way into the 21st century, the phrase has become so familiar and appears so self-evident that it seems there is no more to be said on the subject. But when a metaphor suspends thought because over-use has metastasised it into a trope or cliché, it is not just useless but harmful. The purpose of this Paper is not so much to refute the idea of an Asian 21st century as to unpeel the layers of complexity that the phrase, now taken as almost axiomatic, conceals.

Where and what is ‘Asia’? This deceptively simple question has engaged me since the early 1970s when I was an undergraduate at what was then called the University of Singapore (now the National University of Singapore). I wrote my political science honours thesis on ‘The Idea of Asia’. I was fortunate that my supervisor, the late Professor Wu Teh Yao, allowed me to indulge my interest in a topic that was not obviously ‘political science’ as the academic orthodoxy understood the term, using a methodology that was literary and philosophical rather than the quantitative approach favoured in the social sciences.

I came to two main conclusions. I now realise both are rather obvious, indeed commonplace, but at the time they struck me with the force of revelation and, commonplace or not, I have found them useful ever since.

First, from the time the ancient Greeks divided the world they knew into three parts – Europe, Libya (by which they meant the northern parts of Africa), and Asia, none of which conformed to modern continental delineations – geography was never just spatially defined. To some degree, geography has always been politically determined: geopolitics defines geography as much as geography defines geopolitics.

Second, as political concepts serving political purposes, spatial geographical definitions were therefore perpetually contingent and dynamic, involving not always conscious political choices that changed as circumstances and political needs and fashions evolved. As political concepts, geographical terms are not just descriptive but almost always also have strong normative undertones, regardless of whether these are declared or intended.

To J.K. Fairbank and E.O. Reischauer, who published the first edition of their classic East Asia: Tradition and Transformation in 1965, East Asia meant primarily China and Japan, although there was some discussion of Korea. This was a concept of East Asia built around a sphere of Chinese cultural influence. While the authors certainly had no agenda except the advancement of knowledge, theirs was nevertheless not a politically neutral idea. The 1978 edition of Tradition and Transformation included Vietnam, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore, because by then US defeat in Vietnam and the growth of the four ‘little dragons’ merited more extensive treatment.Still, they were incorporated only as ‘The Rim Nations of East Asia’, which simultaneously emphasised their place in the Sinosphere and their subordinate status in it.

During the 1980s, an expanded idea of East Asia that included the Muslim and Indianised states of Southeast Asia, and not just those in the Sinosphere, gradually crept into the diplomatic lexicon of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Rapid economic growth in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines had begun to blur stark differences between the levels of development of Northeast and Southeast Asia, and hence between the Confucian-influenced states and states shaped by Hindu, Muslim, and Christian influences. This mitigated, even if it did not entirely erase, the subaltern status of the latter three.

Acceptance of this expansion in the meaning of East Asia was facilitated by international recognition of ASEAN as the voice of Southeast Asia due to the leading role it played in mobilising international resistance against the Soviet-supported Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia during the last decade of the Cold War.After the Cold War ended, the definition of Southeast Asia changed again as ASEAN was enlarged to include former adversaries Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia as well as neutral Myanmar, making the clearly Confucian-influenced states the minority. In parallel, the idea of East Asia was stretched as by 2011, the ASEAN-initiated East Asia Summit included India, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Russia, countries that by no previous definitions were considered East Asian. Their inclusion was a political choice.

The East Asia Summit is not unique in bending geography to politics. The idea of the Asia-Pacific, conceived after China’s reform and opening up in 1978, had generated great optimism about the potential for growing economic links between countries, pushed the idea far westwards across the ocean, and infused it with an overwhelmingly cooperative connotation.By the time APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) was formed in 1989, cooperation was taken for granted. But cooperation with whom? India, which has no Pacific coast but is undoubtedly Asian, is not a member of APEC and has little prospect of becoming one; several Latin American countries that are undoubtedly on the Pacific littoral but are indisputably not Asian, are founding members. APEC summits are still a ritual on the region’s diplomatic calendar, yet all but the most inveterate optimist must know that its core agenda of trade liberalisation has slowed, if not entirely stalled, and did so long before Donald Trump became US president.

The Indo-Pacific concept – introduced first by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo of Japan in 2016 but now widely used, including in Europe – encompasses India and South Asia. Its western periphery abuts West Asia, but whether or not the Indo-Pacific includes the Gulf states, which are rediscovering old linkages around and across the Indian Ocean and expanding ties with South and East Asia, is still undetermined. Paradoxically, the Indo-Pacific simultaneously limits if not shrinks the idea of Asia politically even as it geographically links Asia’s two key oceans, because all but the ASEAN variant of the Indo-Pacific concept are widely perceived to be at least in some degree directed against China. Using ‘Indo-Pacific’ instead of ‘Asia-Pacific’ or vice versa to describe this vast region is to signal a political attitude, even if not a definitive choice.

In starting with a passing reference to the ancient Greeks and fast-forwarding to the Indo-Pacific, I have obviously skipped a lot of history. My aim was not comprehensiveness; it was only to give a sense of how the idea of Asia has mutated over time. But through all its innumerable permutations since antiquity, the essential political purpose of the idea of Asia has remained constant. This is to serve as the quintessential ‘other’, mainly for the West, but in some of its variants (as in the cases of Fairbank’s and Reischauer’s idea of East Asia, and in the Indo-Pacific concept), also between Asian countries themselves.

As the ‘other’, Asia was sometimes admired as a model of government by reason or for its spirituality, coveted as a source of fabulous wealth, feared for its teeming masses or revolutionary fervour, or despised for its backwardness and corruption. Seldom, if ever, was it viewed with indifference. The idea that the 21st century is Asian is firmly within this tradition: welcomed by some, viewed with apprehension by others.

Even this short survey of the mutations of the idea of Asia exposes how the noun ‘Asia’ and its adjective ‘Asian’ simplify and conceal the complexities of this vast continent. Neither does ‘Asia’ or ‘Asian’ necessarily imply the inclusion of all the 48 countries that the United Nations recognises as ‘Asian’ or the 54 that belong to its Asia-Pacific regional group. Use of the word ‘Asia’ is always a selection, and the choice is political and serves political purposes. For example, despite their spatial locations, Israel, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand belong to the UN’s Western European and Others Group (WEOG), constituting the ‘others’. This emphasises their colonial past and in Israel’s case, its rejection by the Asia-Pacific group to which other Middle Eastern countries belong. Turkey belongs to both WEOG and the Asia-Pacific group.

The contention that the 21st century will be, or already is, Asian is not simply a convenient, politically neutral, simplistic, and overused trope. Implicit in some usages is the idea that China, due to its size, spectacular growth, and increasing global reach, will define Asia’s future. The glory days of Japan are over; India is too far behind and internally incoherent to matter much; and the rest, whether ‘little dragons’ or ‘tigers’, are too small to make a real difference. So the ‘Asia’ whose century it now is, can only be China. The corollary is of course that the ‘West’ – that protean term which is often shorthand for the United States – must be the past. This idea of the Asian 21st century is a more palatable – because less aggressively phrased and seemingly objective – version of the Maoist slogan, resurrected by Chinese President Xi Jinping, of ‘the East rising and the West declining’.

The emergence of China as a major global player is certainly one of the most important geopolitical facts of the 20th century alongside the collapse of the Soviet Union. The effects will reverberate through the 21st century and perhaps beyond. China must always be a major part of any story of Asia. The rise of new powers does imply a change in the relative position of previously dominant powers such as the United States. But relative change is not absolute change. Acknowledging that China’s association with the idea of the Asian 21st century is warranted is a long way from turning a blind eye to its political use by China, its fellow travellers, and its useful idiots, as a tool to expand influence.

Concerns about Chinese influence operations have grown everywhere. However, the nature of these operations is not well enough understood. All countries conduct influence operations, greatly facilitated by 21st century technologies. What is unique about China is that it deploys its influence operations, whether overt or covert, within the framework of an overarching narrative of China’s inevitable and unstoppable rise. This is a form of psychological manipulation that amplifies the techniques and effects of its operations.

Beijing’s intention is not just to direct behaviour but to condition behaviour. China does not just want you to comply with its wishes, it wants you to think in such a way that you will, of your own volition, do what it wants you to do.

There is a pattern to Chinese influence operations. An overly simplified but superficially plausible narrative of China’s rise is spread by various means.

For the countries of the Global South, it is claimed that China has never in its long history colonised any country (Vietnamese and Koreans, whose countries have repeatedly been invaded and occupied by China, would strongly disagree, as would Tibetans and Uighurs).

Most people are not familiar with Asian history or interested in international affairs. They do not realise they are being fed over-simplifications, and they swallow them. For the more intellectually sophisticated, inducements or the possibility of coercion are dangled tantalisingly to persuade them to look the other way or play along. These inducements are typically economic (being given special advantage in or being cut off from the Chinese market) or academic (being given special access or denied access to Chinese conferences and sources).

For overseas Chinese, there are explicit appeals to ethnicity, facilitated by the anxieties or pride the global resurgence of identity politics often evokes among minority Chinese communities.

The narratives China propagates, underpinned by its long history and growth story, are mesmerising. China appropriates the idea that the 21st century will be Asian so that it becomes the story of China’s rise. It is a powerful tool precisely because it is not a complete fabrication. The idea that the Asian century belongs to China is intended to get us to suspend our critical facilities by instilling a sense of fatalistic inevitability so that all other options seem futile and we will accept false choices forced upon us, primarily that we have to choose between the United States and China and that we better, in our own interests, choose the latter.

After all, if the 21st century is Asian and China is the most authentic manifestation of this idea, only a particularly obtuse individual or country would refuse to get on board. This use of the idea of an Asian 21st century is especially, but certainly not exclusively, attractive to some overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and those a Singapore academic has dubbed ‘Born-Again Chinese’.

No country can ignore China or avoid dealing with it. US-China competition will shape 21st-century international relations just as US-Soviet strategic competition shaped the second half of the 20th century. Strategic competition is not just material; a crucial dimension is psychological. It is all the more important, therefore, to inoculate ourselves against mental manipulation. We acquire immunity only if we see China as a balanced whole, with its weaknesses as well as its strengths. Then the illusion of inevitability dissipates, our critical faculties reawaken, and China stands before us still big, still powerful, still growing, but, after all, just another country. To see China whole, we also need to see the idea that the 21st century is Asian in all its complexity and in broad perspective.

This Paper has been written in the belief that critical examination of the idea of an Asian 21st century is the best counter to attempts to mess with our minds. I am not a scholar and this is not a work of academic scholarship. Think of this Paper as an extended op-ed by someone whose opinions have been shaped by almost four decades in the service of his country’s foreign policy. But the reader should understand that the only title I now hold is that of Singaporean pensioner, and that these are the ramblings of someone who speaks only for himself.

Singapore is a city-state whose ability to influence events outside its borders is always limited but never completely non-existent. To use what agency a small country may have requires the cultivation of a clinical – indeed cold-blooded – cast of mind. Singapore’s first Foreign Minister, Mr S. Rajaratnam, once pointed out that every country has one foreign policy of words and another of deeds: theology and diplomacy. For a small country to confuse theology for diplomacy was, he concluded, as suicidal as ‘a nun wandering through a red-light district proclaiming the brotherhood of man’.

I do not know whether the reader will agree with my opinions. I will make my argument in broad strokes so there will be ample room for debate. I do not claim that mine is the last word on this or any subject. But I can unreservedly assure you that in all my time in the Singapore Foreign Service, the thought of preaching in a red-light district has never even fleetingly crossed my mind.

Chapter One

What’s in a century?

In 1988, Deng Xiaoping, then the paramount leader of China, met Rajiv Gandhi, then prime minister of India, and told him: ‘In recent years, people have been saying that the next century will be the century of Asia and the Pacific, as if that were sure to be the case. I disagree with this view.’

We need to be reminded of this sobering assessment from China’s greatest modern leader because today the idea that the 21st century will be Asian, just as the 20th century was supposed to have been American, is too often regarded as self-evident and thus more often repeated than examined. There have indeed been important global shifts in which ‘Asia’ has figured prominently. But to attach a geographical label to them conceals much more than it illuminates. The proposition that an ‘Asian century’ will replace or already has replaced an ‘American century’ is flawed both factually and in its underlying premises.

‘Asia’ is too broad a category to have any coherent political or strategic meaning. It is more accurate to say that specific Asian countries or Asian leaders have played major roles in global shifts of power and ideas, and that this has been going on in different ways since the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Imperial Japan first defeated Qing China in 1895 and then defeated Imperial Russia in 1905. It would be tedious to repeat this qualification every time I use the word ‘Asia’, but readers should bear it in mind.

One of the earliest uses of the phrase ‘The Asian Century’ that I am aware of is the title of a book, first published in 1956, by the Dutch historian Jan Romein about the rise of nationalism in Asia.But at that time, no Asian country played a global role, politically or economically. All were poor. China isolated itself and was poised to take a ‘Great Leap Forward’, a shortcut to communist utopia that no one, even other ‘socialist’ countries, was eager to follow. India had global ambitions but its capabilities were meagre. Japan was still recovering from the Second World War. Although its defeat of Russia in the early 20th century had a significant influence on Asian nationalism, the stigma of its recent militarist past still hung heavy on Japan’s reputation. It was not until the 1970s that the soaring Japanese economy again became an inspiration to other Asian countries.

There are serious conceptual and historical difficulties in associating an entire political era or order with any continent. To do so imposes a unity of thought and purpose that often simply does not exist.

The long European ‘century’ – something like two to three hundred years if dated from the colonial systems that began to take root during the late 17th century, reached full bloom in the 19th century, and lingered on until the second half of the 20th century – was rife with intra-European rivalries. It was those rivalries that often propelled European powers to expand their empires globally.

America’s decision to intervene in the First World War in 1917 was decisive in determining the outcome. Without the United States on their side, Britain and France may not have defeated Germany. But although 1917 may have marked the beginning of the end of the European era, a United States divided about its global role soon returned to its own preoccupations, allowing Europe a reprieve of a few more decades.

So when Henry Luce, publisher of the influential Life magazine, wrote an editorial entitled ‘The American Century’ in February 1941, it was still more an exhortation to Americans to play an active role in resisting dictatorships rather than the description of an established American order.If there was indeed an ‘American century’, it was a short century of about 67 years from December 1941 when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the Second World War, to circa 2008 when the global financial crisis catalysed widespread disillusionment with US-led globalisation, including among many Americans.

Competition and conflict, or at least the possibility of conflict, are inherent characteristics of any system of sovereign states. They are the permanent verities of international relations, rooted in the very concept of sovereignty, the dynamics of interaction between sovereignties, and ultimately in the dark recesses of human nature itself. It is therefore a fundamental mistake to think that any international order or era, whether geographically defined or not, must necessarily be the result of a consensus. In world history, there has seldom been any period of unchallenged international order. More often than not, it was competition over different conceptions of ‘order’ that defined international relations. Whatever ‘order’ that existed was either imposed by force or, if that was not possible, shaped by the reality of competition.

The so-called ‘American century’ was never uncontested. During the Cold War – 40 of the 67 years of the ‘American century’ – it was the contest between the United States and the Soviet Union, their efforts to reduce the risks of competition, and conflicts between their proxies, that defined international order. The Soviet bloc and China as well as members of the Non-Aligned Movement – the population of more than half the world – rejected key premises of the American order. Even substantial numbers of the populations of the United States and its allies disagreed with what Washington decreed and took their disagreements not just to the ballot box but often to the streets. The Cold War generated many risks and uncertainties, it was sometimes very dangerous, but regardless of which side we identified with or even if we tried or pretended to be non-aligned, for 40 years it was the only ‘order’ we knew.

Two key pillars of the American-conceived post-Second World War global order – the UN system and the Bretton Woods system – have never really functioned as their founders hoped, although they did and still do useful journeyman service.From their inception, the United Nations and most other post-war institutions became arenas for Cold War contests. The UN system was based on a false premise – that the wartime anti-axis alliance would endure after the axis was defeated – and was handicapped from the start. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund did somewhat better, but a central premise of the Bretton Woods system was destroyed overnight when President Richard Nixon unilaterally and without warning delinked the US dollar from gold in August 1971.

The harsh reality of competition and conflict was masked by the overwhelming dominance of US power during a short and exceptional period of less than 20 years from 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, to circa 2008, when the global financial crisis broke out. American ideas alone then seemed to define the international order.

‘Globalisation’ is the modest name given to that vision of international order. But the temptation to see the end of the Cold War not just as another geopolitical event (albeit of profound consequence) in a historical process with no end but to invest it with universal significance proved irresistible to a certain cast of mind. Some were even arrogant enough to suggest that History itself may have ended.

Of course, events paid no heed to such foolish theories and went rolling bloodily onwards. Despite the dominance of the United States, the norms and rules that America and its allies regarded as the natural order of things did not go unchallenged.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and little more than a decade later, the United States invaded Iraq. Vicious genocidal wars erupted in the Balkans and Rwanda. Islamist jihadists violently disputed the fundamental premises of not just American ideas and values, but of modernity itself. This culminated in the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The 9/11 attacks drew the United States into interminable wars – the longest in American history – in the Middle East. ‘Order’ has never meant peace.

Even countries that benefited from the international order as America and its allies conceived it never swallowed it whole. We may have used the same phrase – ‘rules-based order’ – to describe it, but we never meant exactly the same thing by those words. Which rules to emphasise, and how to interpret the rules, were subjects of continual debate. Except at such a high level of generality that they prescribed little of practical significance, there was scant agreement. Most rules, including rights claimed to be universal, were contested. For instance, Singapore, like many other countries in Asia and elsewhere, was much more invested in the economic rules than the political rules and rejected the claim that certain rules granted other countries a voice in how we governed ourselves.

That short, exceptional period of world history was nevertheless extremely beneficial for most of us, particularly in Asia. We grew and prospered during that time. Globalisation was never only an economic concept. As will be explained later, it was also extraordinarily influential in reshaping the dynamics of international relations in ways that survive the passing of that period. But just because it was good for us, and influential, does not make it any less exceptional or more replicable. It is over.

We have returned to a more historically normal period of world history where competition and the ever present possibility of conflict again defines ‘order’.

Rivalry between the United States and China, and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, do not pose any risks that we have not faced before. How are Ukraine or Gaza in principle different from the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan or the endemic violence that has devastated the Congo and Sudan, to name just a few examples? The risks and uncertainties we now face are real, but they are what the late US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld termed ‘known unknowns’.

I am constantly surprised by how much resistance this simple and obvious fact arouses in otherwise acute observers of geopolitics. They grew too comfortable during that exceptional period of world history, confused the exceptional for the norm, and clung desperately to the belief that what was good for them was, or ought to be, the natural order of the world. Now, when the fundamental truths of international relations have reasserted themselves, they have been thrown into a state of denial or confusion. Talk about history ending has long receded into embarrassed silence, but shadows of the attitude that spawned such theories linger.

In his conversation with Rajiv Gandhi, Deng Xiaoping argued that aside from the United States, the only countries in the Asia-Pacific that were relatively developed were Japan, the ‘four little dragons’ of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, as well as Australia and New Zealand. This was only a small percentage of the region’s population, dwarfed by those of China and India. Deng concluded: ‘No genuine Asia-Pacific century or Asian century can come until China, India, and other neighbouring countries are developed.’

In the almost four decades since Deng spoke to Gandhi, the Asia-Pacific has grown significantly. Estimates vary, but in 2024 in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, the Asia-Pacific, excluding the United States, accounted for around 46 per cent of world GDP. If the United States is included, the share rises to 60.7 per cent. In PPP terms, China accounted for about 19.5 per cent of world GDP, India 8.2 per cent, Japan 3.3 per cent, Indonesia 2.3 per cent, South Korea 1.6 per cent, and Australia just under 1 per cent.

Growth and economic weight is, however, not strategic coherence, nor does it lead to collaboration. Not stated explicitly but clear enough in Deng’s conversation with Rajiv Gandhi was that China and India would not just have to grow together but work together. In a press article for his first visit to India in 2014, Xi Jinping himself wrote: ‘I am confident that as long as China and India work together, the Asian century of prosperity and renewal will surely arrive at an early date.’ [emphasis added]

The opposite happened. Within weeks of Xi’s visit, Indian and Chinese forces clashed in the Himalayas. Since 2014, there have been several serious incidents, some resulting in fatalities, on the Sino-Indian Line of Actual Control (LAC). Although tensions have eased, both sides maintain large numbers of troops in the Himalayas and are enhancing their military infrastructure along the LAC.The substantive differences over their border remain unresolved and are unlikely ever to be definitively settled. Stability in the Himalayas is not to be taken for granted.

It is not just the Himalayas. The most active disputes in Asia all involve China: in the East and South China Seas and, most dangerous of all, over Taiwan. China’s relations with Japan, both Koreas, Vietnam, and India are historically fraught, as are many other intra-Asian relationships: between Japan and both Koreas, between India and many of its South Asian neighbours, and between several members of ASEAN, including Malaysia and Indonesia with each other and with Singapore, and Thailand with Myanmar and Cambodia, to name just some of the fault lines.

Many of these intra-Asian complications have been mitigated, particularly in Southeast Asia, by ASEAN. None, however, has been erased, and it is unlikely that they can ever be completely wiped clean because they do not just involve differences of interests that could be reconciled but primordial questions of race, language, and religion that trigger visceral responses.

I am not going to discuss any of these disputes or complicated relationships in detail. There are many specialised works on them that the interested reader may consult. But the fact that intra-Asian relationships are not naturally cooperative is a serious limitation to the idea of an ‘Asian century’ insofar as that requires a minimal level of political coherence, and hence convergence of interests, among Asians. This has never existed except in the imaginations of pan-Asianists of various stripes, from the early Asian nationalists to the present.

Although intra-European relationships were often fraught in the 19th and early 20th centuries, this did not diminish the overall primacy of Europe. Despite their differences, what all European powers had in common was the conviction that they were the natural ‘Lords of Human Kind’.This ensured that whatever their differences, Europe had a common interest in preserving the colonial system. But despite their opposition to colonialism, there was no credible unifying idea to bring Asian nationalists together.

‘Asia is one’ boldly asserted the very first sentence of Kakuzo Okakura’s The Ideals of the East, published in 1903, one of the earliest attempts to make a case for the unity of Asia.His ideas were not atypical of much early nationalist thought. Across Asia, in Japan, India, and China, thinkers debated, criticised, and cross-fertilised in a rich but ultimately vain intellectual quest for unity.

Much as they tried, efforts to find commonality amid Asia’s diversity usually dissolved into mystical vapouring about the allegedly superior spirituality of Asia as compared to the West, perhaps a form of psychological compensation for the reality of powerlessness. Today, Okakura is remembered, if he is remembered at all, for his writing on the Japanese tea ceremony and his work overseeing oriental art at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, worthy but hardly politically weighty matters.

In March and April 1947, with Indian independence only months away, an Asian Relations Conference was convened in New Delhi at the initiative of the Indian Congress Party. Jawaharlal Nehru, who was to become independent India’s first prime minister, took on most of the substantive work of chairing the conference. The intention was to begin to address common problems. It was attended by 28 Asian delegations, only a handful of which were from independent countries. Among them were delegations from China, then in the end stages of civil war, Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as Egypt and a Jewish delegation from Palestine. The conference opened with hopeful speeches, but from the outset was bedevilled by many of the issues that still plague Asia. Congress’ political rival, Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League, tried unsuccessfully to instigate a boycott by Muslim delegations; China clashed with the host, India, over its invitation to Tibet; Egypt and the Jewish delegation squabbled because the latter called Palestine their Holy Land. It took all of Nehru’s diplomatic skills to preserve a veneer of solidarity, and the conference ended on a mildly optimistic note with the announcement that a second conference would be held in China in two years’ time. It never took place.

The Asian nationalist revolt against European colonialism provided mutual inspiration and some sense of common purpose, but not as much cooperation as the early nationalists hoped. The convening of the 1947 Asian Relations Conference in the face of many daunting political and logistical challenges was a symbol of nationalist hopes, but once convened, its dynamics betrayed that shared hope was a tenuous basis for common action or even to just sustain solidarity. Today, when every Asian country is independent, Asian nationalisms – the plural is crucial – are more often than not directed against each other. This is not an inconsequential fact: since the early 20th century, nationalism has proven to be by far the most powerful and enduring idea in Asia, outlasting or bending ideologies of both Left and Right to its service. Nationalism will continue to be the single most important influence on the evolution of the idea of an Asian century.