The New Asian Hemisphere - Kishore Mahbubani

Took a really long time to finish this. Partly because there are alot of arguments packed into each page, and partly because I was working myself a little too hard at work.

But finally! Finally I managed to cross the last page and by then I had forgotten most of the issues stated in the early part of the book. All in all, this was a rather harsh critic of the West and its institutions. There were moments in the book when I cringed, despite being a bystander to the criticisms. In scanning the book a second time, the key learning points that I managed to glean are as follow:

1. End of Western domination of history. This is the period when the western domination of the world history ends and the oft-mentioned rise of the rest begins. However, the improvement in the lives of millions across the world is actually beneficial to the West, as more people join in as global citizens with an interest in ensuring world peace and security. The discomfort to the West is that the relative superiority of the West will inevitably also be diminished.

2. Different layers of freedom. The West had been harping on the issue of freedom of speech, and appear to fail to understand that there are other forms of freedom that Asia has fought hard and achieved, which are in fact more important than freedom of speech itself. Freedom from want (food and basic survivability), security (risks to national and security safety) and freedom to choose one's employment are major advancements that people in the rest of the world are more concerned with at this point in time.

3. China has great potential ahead. It applies the principle of meritocracy ruthlessly in the CCP, in the same way as top companies do in MNCs, which has led it to accumulate top leadership talent in the government that has propelled China forward. It's society might be closed but people have open minds and are ready to find ways to move ahead in a pragmatic way. It has also demonstrated great finesse and acumen in furthering its geopolitical interests in the region and the global stage.

4. Current leadership gaps in the world. We need a strong leader or an institution (i.e. the UN) to bring the world forward in resolving issues facing all of us. However, the West had been unable to make good progress in areas such as the Middle East conflict, bringing down trade barriers, resolving global warming and nonproliferation of nuclear technology.

This short summary is doing a disservice to the breadth and depth of content in the book, but captures what struck me the most when I was reading the book.