A new book from veteran Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan, The Myth of the Asian Century, published as a Lowy Institute Paper, argues that the familiar narrative of an inevitable China-led Asian era is both analytically flawed and strategically dangerous.
Kausikan writes that China’s sheer size, proximity, and economic weight guarantee it influence across Asia, especially in Southeast Asia. But those same characteristics also ensure that Beijing will always provoke anxiety, a paradox Deng Xiaoping understood when he urged China to hide its strength and bide its time. According to Kausikan, that restraint was abandoned during the later Hu Jintao years, as Beijing misinterpreted the 2008 financial crisis as evidence of Western decline—a mistake the United States had once made after the Cold War. The consequences became even clearer under Xi Jinping, whose rise marked the disappearance of the “peaceful development” slogan and the ascent of a more confrontational worldview encapsulated in the phrase “the East rising and the West declining.” What followed was a hardening of China’s posture from the South China Sea to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, and the Himalayas.
Despite China’s assertiveness, Kausikan stresses that Asia is not passive and will not simply yield to Beijing’s preferences. ASEAN states continue to raise the South China Sea issue, prompting regular U.S. freedom of navigation operations and increased naval activity from Japan, Australia, India, and even European countries. Across Southeast Asia, quiet but significant shifts have occurred: deeper defense cooperation with Washington, more frequent joint exercises, and a growing willingness to host U.S. naval presence. Kausikan illustrates this by contrasting Indonesia and Malaysia’s outrage in 1990 when Singapore first offered U.S. forces access to its facilities with the complete absence of protest when the agreement was publicly renewed in 2019. He argues that this change owes less to Singapore’s diplomacy than to China’s failures, which have turned a U.S. security role into a regional public good—even if few countries admit it openly.
At the same time, opinion surveys by Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute reveal a complex regional attitude: China is widely seen as influential but deeply mistrusted. In the 2024 survey, 42.4 percent of Southeast Asian policy elites expressed confidence that the United States would contribute positively to global peace and security, compared with just 24.8 percent for China. Japan remains the most trusted major power, and while many ASEAN policymakers support strengthening the Quad, they do not view that support as equivalent to full trust in the United States. For Kausikan, this reflects a distinctly Asian diplomatic mindset—capable of balancing contradictions, pursuing different alignments across different domains, and refusing to accept binary choices forced by outside powers.
Kausikan argues that nationalism, not great-power influence, is the dominant force in Asian politics. Even small states retain agency, and the assumption that China will dictate regional outcomes simply because it is the largest trading partner is both simplistic and insulting. ASEAN’s trade with China may reach nearly $1 trillion, but if one includes trade with the EU, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, Southeast Asia’s economic orientation toward the broader West surpasses $1.4 trillion. Attempts by Beijing to use economic leverage for coercion—whether against Japan, South Korea, Australia, or the Philippines—have repeatedly failed to produce strategic realignment.
In Kausikan’s view, China’s geopolitical position is far weaker than often acknowledged. Countries from Japan and the Koreas to Vietnam have identities historically shaped in opposition to Chinese dominance. Indonesia and Vietnam are too nationalist to be absorbed into any sphere of influence, and India—equally ancient and populous—will never accept a subordinate role to Beijing. Even Beijing’s supposed support base in the so-called global south is overstated; the group is a loose collection of grievances, not a coalition, and is internally divided on core interests. Xi Jinping’s push to “tell China’s story well” signals an awareness of the reputational damage caused by China’s behavior, but cosmetic shifts in rhetoric have not been matched by changes at sea or in the Himalayas.
The book situates China’s external assertiveness within its internal political structure. Kausikan argues that the Chinese Communist Party’s Leninist emphasis on absolute political control prevents the economic reforms necessary to sustain long-term growth. The property crisis, local government debt, and weak consumer confidence are symptoms not of poor economic policy but of political limits Beijing refuses to relax. Efforts announced in 2013 to allow the market a greater role have largely stalled because Xi’s instinct is always for more Party control. As China confronts slowing growth, deepening demographic decline, and eroding confidence among its elites, it risks entering a vicious cycle where political rigidity undermines economic recovery, which in turn heightens political risk.
Kausikan also underscores how the CCP’s legitimating narrative—rooted in national humiliation and historic destiny—locks Beijing into an uncompromising stance on territorial issues. Claims in the East and South China Seas and, above all, Taiwan, have been woven into a story of inevitable rejuvenation under Party leadership. Once framed as sacred duties and historical inevitabilities, these claims leave little room for practical diplomacy. The narrative renders compromise politically toxic and encourages a sense of entitlement in China’s foreign policy, even as the country’s material conditions become less favorable.
Ultimately, The Myth of the Asian Century argues that China faces a convergence of internal and external pressures at a moment when the CCP cannot retreat from its own ideological commitments. Kausikan warns that China is formidable, but its trajectory is far from assured. Growth—even at five percent—remains significant, but whether that will satisfy domestic expectations or support Beijing’s foreign ambitions is uncertain. He concludes that China is approaching an inflection point where internal contradictions and great-power rivalry may intersect in unpredictable ways. The widespread belief in an inevitable “Asian century” dominated by China, he argues, blinds policymakers to the complexity of Asian agency and misreads the region’s future.
