The Blindness of Western Elites
Western elites, who remain the most globally influential elites, believe that they understand the world better than anyone else. They display little humility when they write in the pages of the New York Times or the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Economist, or when they speak on the BBC and CNN. Most of these elites remain convinced that they are right. Yet they are now distrusted by their masses, who sense in their daily lives the emergence of a new world that the elites either pretend is not happening or dismiss.
These Western elites need to develop a good understanding of this new era that is emerging forcefully, and work with their own populations to formulate thoughtful and pragmatic policy responses that will help everyone prepare for the great changes that have begun, and which will only gain further momentum through the twenty-first century. Adapting to great change is never easy, especially when this massive return of the Rest is coinciding with several other structural revolutions. The world of 2050 will bear little resemblance to the world of 1950, or even 2000. To understand why, just look at Figure 3.
In 1976, the West launched the G7 to bring together the world’s most powerful economies. Their share of the global GDP was 45.3 per cent in 1995.23 By contrast, the share of the E7, the seven largest emerging economies, then was half that at 22.6 per cent. However, by 2015 their respective shares were 31.5 per cent (G7) and 36.3 per cent (E7). PricewaterhouseCoopers has forecast that by 2050, the G7 share will slide to 20 per cent and that of the E7 will have risen to almost 50 per cent in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms.fn124 Few periods of human history have seen such enormous changes in one lifetime. Sadly, no brave Western leader has emerged to speak honestly about them.
This monumental shift of power away from the West will be uncomfortable for Western minds. Ignoring it will only mean delayed and more painful adjustments for Western societies. And the West should bear in mind that the adoption of various Western best practices globally is also creating a more peaceful and prosperous planet that the West can live in happily. Let’s step back from the daily headlines of bad news to see how countries that were seen as hopeless are progressing.
Pakistan is one of the most troubled countries in the world. Virtually no one sees Pakistan as a symbol of hope. Yet, despite being thrust into the frontlines by George W. Bush after 9/11 in 2001 and forced to join the battle against the Taliban, ‘Pakistan experienced a “staggering fall” in poverty from 2002 to 2014, according to the World Bank, halving to 29.5 per cent of the population.’25 In the same period, the middle-class population soared.
Henry Kissinger famously described Bangladesh as a ‘basket case’ country after he opposed the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971. Yet it has achieved an average rate of 5.5 per cent growth over the past two decades.26 More amazingly, the World Bank has announced that Bangladesh can reach its goal of achieving ‘middle income’ status by 2021. Life expectancy in Bangladesh has also risen sharply, from 45.83 in 1960 to 69.68 in 2010. For the first time in centuries, the poor people of Bangladesh are feeling hopeful for the future. Hope begets happiness.
When countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan have begun marching steadily towards middle-class status for a significant part of their populations, the world has turned a corner. Indeed, the statistics for the growth of middle classes globally are staggering. From a base of 1.8 billion in 2009, the number will hit 3.2 billion by 2020. By 2030, the number will hit 4.9 billion,27 which means that more than half the world’s population will enjoy middle-class living standards by then.
In theory, these statistics only tell a story about economic development. In practice, these statistics are about the elimination of human suffering and a daily increase in the sum of human happiness. As a result of economic growth, each year new clinics and schools are built; electricity lines and water pipes are laid; more children are vaccinated; women get educated; fewer babies die; more people live longer; and people get better jobs. In short, all the things that Western populations took for granted and the Rest thought were out of their grasp are becoming universal. For the majority of us, the past three decades – 1990 to 2020 – have been the best in human history.
A happier humanity is emerging. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we may be on the verge of utopia. Why have we not begun to celebrate this? One possible reason is that we have become addicted to ‘news’. We pay attention to events, not trends. One good case study is provided by Malaysia. Many well-informed observers of Malaysia are aware of the many trials and tribulations Malaysia has suffered in the past three decades: the spectacular political clash between Dr Mahathir and his deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim in 1997, resulting in Anwar Ibrahim’s beating and imprisonment; Dr Mahathir’s successful campaign to unseat his successor, Abdullah Badawi, in 2003; and the ongoing – so far unsuccessful – campaign to unseat the current PM, Najib Razak. Foreign observers are also aware of the Malaysian Airlines (MAS) plane MH 17, shot down in Ukraine on 17 July 2014, and MH 370, which is still missing after disappearing on 8 March 2014. Malaysia is also associated with the scandals surrounding the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (where close associates of Prime Minister Najib Razak were implicated in financial improprieties28) and the dramatic killing of the brother of the North Korean leader at the Kuala Lumpur airport on 13 February 2017. Malaysia has had more than its fair share of bad news.
As a result, few people are aware that, in terms of human development, Malaysia is one of the most successful countries in the developing world. Its poverty rate has gone down spectacularly from 51.2 per cent in 195829 to 1.7 per cent in 2012.30 Its middle class grew by 6.5 million people from 1990 to 2008.31 According to a 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, Malaysia experienced the greatest increase in the share of the population that are upper-middle-class income earners, which rose from 12 per cent in 2001 to 29 per cent in 2011. According to a study by NYU,32 in 1967, there were 25 vehicles per 1,000 members of the population in Malaysia. By 2002, this number had grown to 240 vehicles per 1,000.
Similarly, Internet penetration rates rose from 21.4 per cent in 2000 to 68.6 per cent in 2016. Smartphone penetration rose from 51 per cent in 2014 to 71 per cent in 2016. According to the spring 2015 Pew Global Attitudes survey, which measured the share of adults owning a smartphone, Malaysia ranked ninth in the world. As a result, Malaysians have become well-connected with the new modern economy.
This ignorance about the extraordinary progress made by billions on our planet is aggravated by the global supremacy of Western media, which dominate global news and infect the world with the prevailing Western pessimism.
Historians in the future will marvel at how the end of the 200-year Western domination of world history circa 2020 coincided with a new dawn in human history. It could have been otherwise. The end of Western domination could have resulted in a new dark age for the world. Indeed, many in the West still believe that we are on the threshold of such a dark age today. The truth is the exact opposite.
Given the dominance of bad news in the West, accentuated by Trump and Brexit, few in the West have noticed another startling fact of our times. Three of the four most populous countries in our world are Asian: China (1.3 billion), India (1.2 billion) and Indonesia (250 million). All three are led by exceptionally honest and competent leaders: Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and Jokowi, respectively. Is this an amazing coincidence? Or is it, perhaps, a reflection of our times? These societies are in the throes of a new resurgence. As such, their people expect and support strong, competent leaders.
Xi, Modi and Jokowi are exceptionally competent. However, they are not exceptional in providing relatively good governance. As indicated earlier, more and more countries are enjoying functional, instead of dysfunctional, governance. Functional governance is good enough to improve the lives of people and lift living standards. Today, most governments of the world have become functional.
Why is this not studied or discussed? At least in part it is because the media only cover the more dysfunctional governments. A region-by-region analysis would show that every region in the world enjoys more functional than dysfunctional governments. Southeast Asia was a hotbed of conflict and strife from 1945 to 1985. Now, as Jeffery Sng and I document in our book The ASEAN Miracle, all ten ASEAN governments are functional and thrusting Southeast Asia forward to become the fourth-largest economic area in the world by 2050.
No other region can show such a sharp contrast between its dysfunctional past and its functional future, but Southeast Asia is not an exception. South Asia, another strife-ridden area, now probably has only one dysfunctional government, Nepal. As documented earlier, even Pakistan and Bangladesh are progressing slowly and steadily. In the neighbouring Gulf region, the news focuses on the conflict in Yemen. Yet, next door to Yemen, another nation, Oman, has been gradually making progress for decades. Oman’s per capita GDP has increased from US $9,907 in 1980 to US $15,965 in 2015.33 Indeed, most members of the Gulf Cooperation Council are doing well. One leading indicator to watch is the percentage of women being educated. In Saudi Arabia alone, female tertiary enrolment rose from 10.7 per cent in 1991 to 59.8 per cent in 2014.34 In a huge breakthrough, in September 2017 the Saudi king finally lifted the ban on women drivers. Modernity is seeping into all corners of the world.
Latin American governments have also become more functional. Venezuela stands out as an exception. Similarly, overall Sub-Saharan Africa is making steady progress. For every Somalia that is dysfunctional, there are several neighbours that are functional, including Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Tanzania. Ethiopia was long a symbol of African poverty. However, its per capita income has increased by 214 per cent in the past three decades.35 Rwanda and Uganda have also grown their per capita income in a sustainable way.
By a curious coincidence, the two regions that seem to be an exception to this broad trend are the two regions that the West has meddled in the most in recent times: North Africa and the Middle East. Is the relative failure of these two regions a result of bad luck? Poor leadership? Flawed societies and cultures? Or Western meddling?
Twenty-five years ago, I warned Europe that if it didn’t take better care of North Africa, boatloads of refugees would cross the tiny sea that is the Mediterranean. I wrote,
If something goes wrong in, say, Algeria or Tunisia, the problems will impact on France. In the eyes of the North African population, the Mediterranean, which once divided civilizations, has become a mere pond. What human being would not cross a pond if thereby he could improve his livelihood? Through all previous centuries, men and women have crossed oceans and mountains to seek a better life, often suffering terrible hardship in the process.36
It didn’t take a strategic genius to see this coming. Yet Europeans were shocked when refugees began to arrive from North Africa.
It is therefore vital to stress here that the stories from North Africa and the Middle East (especially Iraq and Syria) that hog Western newspaper headlines are the sharp exception to a larger global surge of functional governance. As the Dean of a School of Public Policy, I saw daily how the appetite and capacity for functional governance has spread globally.