The India-China dynamic seems set to lead an age of meta-reason

A world led by Western values is yielding to one where the mutual learnings of Asian powerhouses will shape key outcomes

- ROHIT PRASAD

With China being granted more than double the number of patents than the US in 2022, and India emerging as one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world, it is clear that the pivot to Asia spoken of since the 1980s is already a reality. Up till this time, scholars have generally attributed this development to factors that played an important role in the rise of Western countries, with insufficient attention paid to cultural drivers unique to Asia. Indeed, the implicit assumption behind the policy of strategic engagement adopted by the US with respect to China since the 1970s was that an economically well-off Chinese population would demand democracy in much the same way as the American population.

Today, China is posing difficult questions for the universalist Western conception of human societies by becoming a powerhouse of innovation while retaining its authoritarian political system. Similarly, by cleaving to democracy, albeit with varying levels of success, despite its material challenges, India bucked the trend of other newly independent colonies that regressed into authoritarian structures. These contrarian phenomena suggest that the restoration of Asian influence after about 500 years is not merely a geographical redistribution of power, but represents a fundamental change in the cognitive foundations that animate our civilization.