Asian Century
Asia's predicted cultural and economic dominance in the 21st century
The Asian Century is the projected 21st-century dominance of Asian politics and culture, assuming certain demographic and economic trends persist. The concept of Asian Century parallels the characterisation of the 19th century as Britain's Imperial Century, and the 20th century as the American Century.
A 2011 study by the Asian Development Bank found that 3 billion Asians (so 56.6% of the estimated 5.3 billion total inhabitants of Asia by 2050) could enjoy living standards similar to those in Europe today, and the region could account for over half of global output by the middle of this century.
Some argue that Asia's growing emphasis on solidarity, as well as maturing and progressive relationships among countries in the region, will further underpin the creation of the 21st Asian Century. However, the worsening relations between China and India make hopes for a peaceful and cooperative Asian world order seem unlikely.
Origin
In 1924, Karl Haushofer used the term "Pacific age," envisaging the growth of Japan, China and India: "A giant space is expanding before our eyes with forces pouring into it which ... await the dawn of the Pacific age, the successor of the Atlantic age, the over-age Mediterranean and European era." The phrase Asian Century arose in the mid to late 1980s, and is attributed to a 1988 meeting with Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping of China and Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi of India in which Deng said that '[i]n recent years people have been saying that the next century will be the century of Asia and the Pacific, as if that were sure to be the case. I disagree with this view.' Prior to this, it made an appearance in a 1985 US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing. It has been subsequently reaffirmed by Asian political leaders, and is now a popularly used term in the media.
Reasons
Asia's robust economic performance over the three decades preceding 2010, compared to that in the rest of the world, made perhaps the strongest case yet for the possibility of an Asian Century.
The public source identifies “Asian Century” as asia's predicted cultural and economic dominance in the 21st century. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Asian, Century and Asia's.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3099839. The first chronological checks are 2011, 2050, 1924 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “Asian Century” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.