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Why it’s important to read up on Asia

I CONSTANTLY tell my students that if they only come to understand one area of the world fully, make it Asia. Why the emphasis on Asia, they ask? Well, here is just one of many reasons: In just a few years, something like 90 per cent of all PhD-holding scientists and engineers will be living in Asia. Want more? “Each year,” notes the gifted Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and Singapore’s former UN ambassador, “India is introducing more gifted people into the global economy than any other society, with the possible exception of China.” Still not convinced? Alright then, try this: something like one billion Asians are Muslims (only about 200 million live in North Africa and Europe). So if you’re interested in the ‘Moslem world’ — whatever that might mean — keep watching Asia.

But how best to maintain an intelligent and efficient personal Asia watch? Aside from the obvious — travel there as much as possible — read and bookmark the best stuff available. Among the periodicals that students generally have not heard of, I recommend — for Japan alone — The Oriental Economist, the consistently savvy monthly out of New York, and the Nekkei Weekly, the comprehensive business and political news magazine out of Tokyo. For China’s view of the region, read the Beijing-based newspaper China Daily, though it does arrive in the States ten days or so late; but it is indispensable, and often surprisingly entertaining. Better known, of course, are The Far Eastern Economic Review and The Economist — they are unavoidable, but, alas, sometimes Western-centric. The preferred-periodical list could go on.

Leaving aside Asia’s many vital news-sites, especially The Straits Times of Singapore and The South China Morning Post (two terrific newspapers that — despite individual shortcomings — rival the quality of almost any Western paper), I tell my students to read serious books on Asia. Here are four that I just finished; they were so compelling that I intend to re-read them next year.

The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East — by Kishore Mahbubani (Public Affairs Books). Singapore’s educator and diplomat writes like a Jonathan Swift and thinks like a chainsaw usefully massacring all sorts of Western sacred cows. His first book “Can Asians Think?” was a little masterpiece, and my students love it; this new one is deeper and even more thoughtful and not for one single page a bore. Read this book for a surpassingly incisive sense of how a former Asian diplomat and current policy-school Dean conceptualises tricky but fateful relations between “the West and the rest.” Your geopolitical brain will never be as orthodox or as predictable again — and you’ll thank me!

Asia, America, and the Transformation of Geopolitics — by William H. Overholt (Cambridge University Press/RAND Corporation). Overholt is the director of RAND’s Center for Asia Pacific Policy and probably knows as much about Asia as anyone in the United States. His new book is a muscular, mind-expanding tour of the Asian geopolitics of today and tomorrow, told on an epic, intelligent scale. You don’t want to travel any deeper into this century without having this book thoroughly encrypted into your DNA. Overholt has scoped out all-important and sometimes difficult-to-assess China with special brilliance.

The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us — by Robyn Meredith (Norton). Journalists typically offer the reader all the historical and geopolitical perspective of a play-by-play football announcer, if that. But Meredith — who holds down the Forbes magazine Hong Kong bureau — is quite special. Her new book comparing and contrasting the rise of India and China is a monument to how wonderful truly incisive journalism can sometimes be. Her glittering talent for the telling of stories that are illuminating as well as entertaining gives this terrific book a zing that makes it endlessly engrossing. There’s also a nifty undercurrent of a plot line, involving a race between the slow but steady elephant and the fast but mercurial dragon. Who should win? Get the book to find out.

The Risk of Infidelity Index: A Vincent Calvino Novel — by Christopher G. Moore (Grove Press). An accomplished novelist can penetrate through life’s surface reality and bring out unique word-pictures of profound meaning and clarity. Chris Moore’s series of private-eye tales set in the full mysterious splendor of bubbling Bangkok remind us anew of how much meaning we miss out on when we don’t worship true artists and give them a proper hearing or reading. This weekend, the country of Thailand undergoes an election that simply cannot be understood by reading current journalism alone. For underneath Bangkok society is a deeply encrusted demi-world of hope, despair, corruption and courage that Moore, an American-born writer who has lived in Bangkok for almost 20 years, paints with maestro-like Dickensian strokes. Marvelously, he makes you care about the Thais in a most unexpected and startling way. This is a real artist at work, and at play.

Prof. Tom Plate, a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, teaches Asian politics and media at the University of California at Los Angeles.