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The Asian Century Geopolitical strategist Parag Khanna tells Hong Xinyi why he’s bullish about Asia

e meet parag khanna Indeed, The Future is Asian was written right after we watch him deftly partly to offer an alternative narrative of field questions during an event the region. Instead of focusing largely on organised by the Forum Club and geopolitical tensions, Parag also draws the Essec & Mannheim Executive attention to signs of vitality that are MBA programme. So it comes as a bit of a perhaps more easily perceived when you are surprise when this eloquent geopolitical actually here, such as the dynamism of Asian strategist tells us he was once almost held back entrepreneurs and cities.­ in school as a child because he did not speak He also takes a markedly non-ideological English very well. approach to assessing the Asian landscape. Here’s why: when he was six years old, his Take, for instance, his formulation of “new parents moved the family from to the Asian values”, a riff on an old idea. In United Arab Emirates, and then to the US, the 1990s, some regional leaders such as in pursuit of better economic opportunities. Lee Kuan Yew had championed what they They settled down in New York, where termed “Asian values”, positing that an Parag soon learned to master his new home’s emphasis on collective harmony rather than national language. individual rights had helped Asia succeed. More adventures arrived in 1989, the year “That narrative of Asian triumphalism he turned 12. “The Berlin Wall fell, and my kind of fizzled after the 1997 financial crisis, dad said, we’ve got to check this out,” he but that doesn’t mean Asians don’t share recounts. A month later, they were on a family common values,” Parag believes. In his view, vacation in East Germany, where Parag got Asians tend to favour technocratic governance, to sit on a section of that very wall. “That was helmed by strong leaders with a long-term my geopolitical awakening. Every single thing agenda of national development; mixed I’ve done in my career, I can trace back to capitalism, where a free market is tempered that moment.” by state regulation in support of critical He later finished high school in Germany industries; and social conservatism, which he as an exchange student, and went on to study defines as “balancing collective responsibility at and outcomes with individual demands for and the London School of Economics, and freedom of expression”. worked for prestigious think tanks and These values could be—and indeed have academic institutions. Today, he is the founder been—easily pilloried when seen through the and managing partner of strategic advisory lens of Western liberalism. “But I don’t believe firm FutureMap, and author of six books. in opinion, I believe in data,” Parag quips. In The latest of these is The Future is Asian, in fact, he says he wrote the book for Asians—a which he presents a largely optimistic view striking statement from someone educated of the region’s socio-economic prospects and in the Western paradigm. What do you think soft‑power influence. Asians need to know about Asia, we ask? It is a take he has formulated from a very “Asia has patterns of commerce, conflict specific perspective—that of a first-generation and cultural exchange that go back thousands Asian-American who has moved back to Asia. In of years, before Westerners ever entered their 2012, he relocated from London to , lives,” he replies. “Recreating these linkages along with his wife—fellow powerhouse is much easier than it sounds. Commercial strategic adviser Ayesha Khanna—and their and diplomatic integration within Asia is two children. “My last three books were increasingly robust, it has become the centre written while living in Singapore,” he says. of global trade and has almost 60 per cent of “I can’t imagine what they would have been the global population. We already live in the like if I had been sitting in a cubicle in a Asian century. Only our psychology needs

Washington DC think tank.” to catch up.” LIONEL LAI/ACEPIX PHOTOGRAPHY: