Asia Ignored by the Media?

In the 1940s during World War II, I remember the war news being mostly about the war in Europe and very little news of the war in Asia. The bombing of Europe dominated the North American radio news and newspapers. Apart from the atomic bombs, I do not remember news items about the bombing of Japan which was extensive.

Today some of our news media are again ignoring some of the news from Asia. For example, “Uzbekistan’s growth rate of 8 percent is one of the world’s highest.” The population of Uzbekistan is 32 million. We do get some news from China but China’s population of 1.3 billion is less than half of the population of Asia of 5 billion. The population of Asia is about 60% of the population of the world.

Parts of Asia in the past 50 years have experienced spectacular economic growth and the elimination of poverty for hundreds of millions. (“from 1980 to the present, well over 1 billion Asians have been lifted out of poverty” see The Future is Asian (2019) by Parag Khanna).

“We are entering the third wave of modern Asian growth that began with postwar Japan and South Korea, followed by greater China, and now propelled by South and Southeast Asia”. See page 147 in The Future is Asian (2019) by Parag Khanna.

The following is from a review of Parag Khanna’s book:

“In the 19th century, the world was Europeanized. In the 20th century, it was Americanized. Now, in the 21st century, the world is being Asianized. The ‘Asian Century’ is even bigger than you think. Far greater than just China, the new Asian system taking shape is a multi-civilizational order spanning Saudi Arabia to Japan, Russia to Australia, Turkey to Indonesia—linking five billion people through trade, finance, infrastructure, and diplomatic networks that together represent 40 percent of global GDP. ”

Asian prosperity has resulted in real property purchases by Asians in many Canadian cities including Fredericton, N.B. Maritime Law Book Ltd. sold its Fredericton building in 2017 to a family from Beijing China.

Some Asian nations have a household savings rate as high as 35% (versus 5 to 7% in the USA). Some of these savings have made their way to Canada where for more than 10 years home mortgage rates have been 3 to 5%. Prior to the Asian economic takeoff, Canadian home mortgage rates ranged from 6% to 12% and more.

Asian immigration to Canada has resulted in cities such as Markham, Ontario being very Asian. Parag Khanna says at page 223: “Already almost one in every seven Canadians is of Asian heritage. Vancouver is now North America’s most Asian city”.

The Western financial press when discussing the 2007-08 recession often fails to mention the stabilizing effect provided by the new economics of Asian nations. “By the time of the 2007–08 Western financial crisis, intra-Asian trade was so robust that it cushioned the shock of falling exports to the United States and European Union. The ‘global financial crisis’ was not actually global.”see page 152 of The Future is Asian.

Stay tuned!