Move over West, Asia is here

The world is entering a new era, an era marked by two major changes. The first is the beginning of the end of Western domination - not the end of the West, though. The second is the Asian "renaissance", because the 21st century will be the century of Chinese and Indian economies. These are the words of Kishore Mahbubani, dean of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

"The shift (from West to East) has come faster than I expected," says Mahbubani, who served as a Singapore diplomat for 33 years. "Western countries have been traumatized by the financial crisis. Unemployment in the United States is at an all-time high. Nobody knows when the US is going to recover. The European Union (EU) is facing a lot of problems, too." All these reflect that power is shifting from Europe and the US to Asia.

The West, however, is skeptic about Mahbubani's views. For instance, when his book, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, was published in 2008, The Economist criticized him saying: "Mr Mahbubani's Asian triumphalism is as futile and unconvincing as the Western triumphalism he deplores". And The New York Times said: " Mahbubani heaps too much scorn on the West without taking Asia to task for its own missteps."