Analysis: The Asian dragon may not be biggest power in world

Today’s ongoing global power shifts are primarily linked to Asia’s phenomenal economic rise, the speed and scale of which have no parallel in world history. With the world’s fastest-growing economies, fastest-rising military expenditures, fiercest resource competition, and most serious hot spots, Asia obviously holds the key to the future global order.

But Asia faces major constraints. It must cope with entrenched territorial and maritime disputes, such as in the South China Sea; harmful historical legacies that weigh down its most important interstate relationships; increasingly fervent nationalism; growing religious extremism; and sharpening competition over water and energy.

One central concern is that, unlike Europe’s bloody wars of the first half of the 20th century, which made war there unthinkable today, the wars in Asia in the second half of the 20th century only accentuated bitter rivalries. Several Asian interstate wars have taken place since 1950.

To take the most significant example, China staged military interventions even when it was poor and internally troubled. A 2010 Pentagon report cites Chinese military preemption in 1950, 1962, 1969, and 1979 in the name of strategic defence.

Indeed, not since Japan rose to world-power status during the reign of the Meiji Emperor (1867-1912) has another non-Western power emerged with such potential to shape the global order.

But there is an important difference: Japan’s rise was accompanied by the other Asian civilizations’ decline. After all, by the 19th century, Europeans had colonised much of Asia, leaving in place no Asian power that could rein in Japan.

Today, China is rising alongside other important Asian countries, including South Korea, Vietnam, India, and Indonesia.

Although China now has displaced Japan as the world’s second largest economy, Japan will remain a strong power for the foreseeable future.

When Japan emerged as a world power, imperial conquest followed, whereas a rising China’s expansionist impulses are, to some extent, checked by other Asian powers. Militarily, China is in no position to grab the territories that it covets. But its defence spending has grown almost twice as fast as its GDP. And, by picking territorial fights with its neighbours and pursuing a muscular foreign policy, China is compelling other Asian states to work more closely with the US and each other.

In fact, China seems to be on the same path that made Japan an aggressive, militaristic state, with tragic consequences for the region – and for Japan.

More broadly, Asia’s power dynamics are likely to remain fluid, with new or shifting alliances and strengthened military capabilities continuing to challenge regional stability.

The future will not belong to Asia merely because it is the world’s largest, most populous, and fastest-developing continent. Size is not always an asset.

In fact, with far fewer people, Asia would have a better balance between population size and available natural resources, including water, food, and energy.

In addition to its growing political and natural-resource challenges, Asia has made the mistake of overemphasizing GDP growth to the exclusion of other indices of development.

So make no mistake. Asia’s challenges are graver than those facing Europe, which embodies comprehensive development more than any other part of the world. Despite China’s aura of inevitability, it is far from certain that Asia, with its pressing internal challenges, will be able to spearhead global growth and shape a new world order.

• Brahma Chellaney, professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, is the author of Asian Juggernaut and Water: Asia’s New Battleground