The world is still reeling from the financial crisis, with Asia one of the few areas with strong future growth prospects. This should mark a new intellectual era. But policy makers across the region continue to turn to those very things that got the world into its current predicament – western ideas.
It is not just that we have failed to figure out how to live with the forces released by the industrial revolution, we are struggling with the ideologies it created too, notably the continuing stubborn belief that markets, technology and liberal democracy will deliver all the things we need.
Yes, those ideas, born in Europe and then refined in North America, brought great prosperity to a part of the global population. But their formulas cannot be endlessly repeated and applied everywhere.