The British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm once called the epoch stretching from the French Revolution of 1789 to World War I's outbreak in 1914 as the "long 19th century." A little over a decade ago, people began to speculate about an emerging "Asian century," driven by an unstoppable China and enabled by America's supposed inevitable decline.
But with China's economy in turmoil, key East Asian "tiger" economies like Malaysia and Thailand floundering, and even Singapore facing questions about the vitality of its economic model, is this "Asian century" coming to a premature end?
Political and economic troubles plague the region from east to west. In India and Indonesia, hopes that the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, respectively, would spark a new wave of economic reform now seem to be running in sand.