Free Asia-Pacific from Western hold

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation is meant to liberalize many profitable fields: free trade, innovative growth, and land and sea connectivity. This is fine. But it should also usher in a new Asia-Pacific culture, and here is why:

APEC has 21 economically, geographically and culturally diverse members, which account for about 40 percent of the world's population, 44 percent of global trade and 55 percent of world GDP. Yet its cultural baggage is 100 percent Anglo-European. This needs to change.

When Mark Zuckerberg, one of the co-founders of Facebook, spoke in Chinese to a group of students at Tsinghua University on Oct 22, he was cheered by China's media. For more than 300 years, the Europe-centric (or West-centric) world has categorically omitted, suppressed and excluded Chinese words, ideas and names from world history, and here was a Western celebrity who broke the spell.