The forest and the trees

FOR this writer, a Londoner by birth, the weekly task of producing Banyan has been among the happiest spells in a 40-year involvement with Asia that began in August 1976, in what English-speakers then called Peking. China’s capital was a city of bicycles and earthquake shelters, of blue Mao suits and tinny propaganda blaring from loudspeakers, of poorly stocked shops and farmland reeking of nightsoil. The next month, Mao died. China soon began the reforms that have turned Beijing into a smoggy, traffic-clogged but dynamic metropolis. Much of Asia is similarly transformed. Hundreds of millions have lifted themselves out of poverty, albeit at dreadful cost to the environment; cities have mushroomed as farmers have left the land in droves; birth rates have plummeted. A continent’s parents have mostly been confident their children will lead better lives than they have done.

The “Asia” Banyan covers is a European cartographic concoction. It stretches from Kazakhstan in the north-west to New Zealand, and from the Maldives in the south-west to islands Japan disputes with Russia. Despite its arbitrary borders and bewildering diversity, this Asia is growing in coherence. As he moves on after six years, your columnist remains optimistic about the patch he is leaving. The long-term trends are towards greater prosperity and prolonged peace. But, as in 1976, wrenching transitions loom.