Away from a Western perspective, life looks good

Despite the rise of China and other emerging nations, most people still see the world through a Western prism.

This is a point made in a new book Has the West Lost It? A Provocation by Kishore Mahbubani, who I had the privilege of interviewing recently in Beijing.

The former Singapore diplomat, who is now regarded as one of Asia’s leading public intellectuals, said that if you were to take your view of the world just from Western media outlets like CNN, you would get the impression that it is a very gloomy place indeed.

“You would think that this was a depressing period in history, but most people in the West are shocked to discover that the last 30 years have been the best for human history since history began,” he said.

He was referring to rising living standards and the eradication of poverty in emerging nations. Even a country like Pakistan, which has often been on the frontline of conflict, saw its poverty rate fall from about 60 percent in 2002 to about 29.5 percent in recent years, according to the World Bank. Malaysia, one of the success stories of the developing world, saw its poverty rate fall from 51.2 percent in 1958 to 1.7 percent in 2012.

Where living standards have dramatically improved is, of course, China, but even that often goes under the radar in the West.

Michael Wood, a TV historian, was particularly excited by this when I caught up with him at the British Library in London earlier this month.

He has made a series of films on reform and opening-up, which are shortly to be broadcast on China Central Television. The trailers of these have already been something of a hit on Tencent Video app.

We discussed a new BBC series called Icons about the most important figures of the 20th century, in which former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping does not even feature, despite the 40th anniversary of his great initiative having just passed.

“He is not mentioned. Yet the opening up of China is one of the most important moments in the modern history of the world, and Deng is the most important leader of the 20th century,” Wood said.

While I was in the United Kingdom I also interviewed Peter Frankopan at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford about his new book The New Silk Roads, and continued with this theme.

One of his arguments is that people in Central Asia and, indeed, other emerging countries have a sense that “tomorrow will be better than today”, which is not always felt in the West.

“According to the Gini coefficient (which measures inequality in societies), if you are born in Kazakhstan or Sierra Leone in the bottom 20 percent, you have a better chance of getting out than if you are born in the US or the UK,” he said.

This is something that is extraordinary in itself and is as good an explanation as any as to why there are currently so many disenchanted people in the West who see voting for Donald Trump, Brexit or farright parties in Europe as a way out.

In contrast, according to Mahbubani, people in emerging economies put their faith in “exceptionally honest and competent” leaders like President Xi Jinping who offer stability and longterm vision.

It is not a picture that is often painted by the Western media, which wallows perhaps too much in doom and gloom.

The world, however, is changing in a fundamental way and many of its citizens do not see things in quite that way. They believe, instead, that the future is theirs.