TOKYO - The incontestable Asian story of the decade is the rise of China to virtual global parity with the United States. Both in economic terms and increasingly in military terms China now approaches equilibrium with the West. It is a country that no longer feels the need to throw a human rights bone in form of releasing a dissident to appease a visiting American president. Some signposts of the decade on the way to super power status would include:
In November, 2005, China's national bank announced that it had one trillion dollars worth of foreign exchange reserves, mostly U.S. dollars. Of course, these figures now stand at more than $2 trillion, of which nearly $800 billion are in U.S. treasury notes. The next year, 2006, it floated China Petrochem as the world's first trillion-dollar corporation, exceeding the capitalization of ExxonMobil and General Electric combined.
In military terms, it surprised the West in 2007 by shooting down one of its own orbiting satellites, thus proving that it would do the same for any other country's satellite. In 2008 it held a grand naval regatta ostensibly to celebrate the founding of the Peoples Liberation Army Navy to underscore the modernization of its fleet. It lacks only aircraft carriers for full power projection, a deficiency it will certainly correct in the coming decade.
During the decade, China surpassed Germany as the world's third-largest economy and is poised displace Japan for second place sometime in the new year. It suffered from the global downturn, which hurt exports, but bounced back more quickly than other countries thanks in part to a $500 billion stimulus package, which puts the country on track to maintain nine percent annual growth. But China would not have prospered to this extent during the decade had it not evolved a political succession process that fits its particular authoritarian form of government.
In what was the first peaceful, systematic transfer of power in Communist China, former president Jiang Zemin surrendered his offices to Hu Jintao at mid-decade. In 2007 at the 17th Communist Party Congress China held its own "presidential primary" elevating Xi Jinping to the standing committee of the party politburo. The following year he was elected vice president by the National People's Congress. The vice presidency seems now a kind of holding place for the anointed successor giving him a chance to mingle with foreign leaders (including an audience with the Japanese emperor this month) and perform other useful executive tasks such as heading up the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The process is still sufficiently opaque to give China watchers plenty to speculate about (from outside the country - Chinese journalists who inquire too closely into the inner workings of the party can get jailed).
In March, 2000 voters in Taiwan made history when they narrowly chose as president Chen Shui-bian of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party over the Kuomintang candidate in the first peaceful transfer of power through the voting booth in China's 4,000-year history. Chen narrowly won re-election in 2004, but the DPP candidate for president was defeated by Ma Ying-jeou in 2008. So during the decade Taiwan democracy came full circle. The voters threw the bums out and then threw the bums back in. South Korea experienced the same thing with the 2007 election of conservative Lee Myung-bak after 10 years of left-of-center governance by two previous presidents, including Kim Dae-jung, whose death in 2009 certainly should be one of the obituaries of the decade.
In 2009 Japan surprised the world - and itself - by overthrowing the Liberal Democratic Party, which had governed the country, almost without interruption, for more than 50 years. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan, formed officially in 1996, picked up an astounding 200 seats in the lower house of parliament. Finally, the Japanese had accomplished what other democracies in the world do all the time. They threw the bums out. But it should be remembered that the LDP led by prime minister Junichiro Koizumi pulled off a similar feat when his party gained 80-some seats in the 2005 general election. Wild swings in the electorate seem to be becoming the norm in Japanese politics.
Indonesia marked its transition into a working democracy during the decade with the 2005 election of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. He was overwhelmingly re-elected in 2009. Aside from being the first directly elected president, he ousted incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Indonesia's founding dictator, Sukarno. Indonesia was the site of the Asia's worst terrorist incident of the decade when militants exploded bombs in the tourist resort of Bali in 2002. However, the government not only caught and eventually executed the perpetrators, its overall response to terrorism has been exemplary, with its special Detachment 88 team tracking down and killing major terrorists while severely disrupting al-Qaeda's Southeast Asia affiliate Jemmah Islamiyah.
Malaysian voters did not exactly throw the bums out in the 2008 general election, but they evicted a lot of them. The combined opposition made the biggest gains - 82 seats in the 222-seat lower house of parliament - since Malaysia became independent of Britain in 1957. The opposition also won majorities in the legislatures of five states. It was not enough to effect a change of government, but it showed that the voters are becoming weary of the "Asian Values" dictum that political stability (meaning keep voting for the guys in power) is essential for economic development. The main opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim secured a seat for himself along with some 30 followers, but he still faced harassment with new sodomy charges.
Thailand was a big exception to the general Asian trend as most of the decade was marked by a titanic power struggle between former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and conservative-royalist opponents. The struggle was punctuated by annulled parliamentary elections, abrogated constitutions, judiciary meddling and a military coup in 2006. The opposition "yellow shirts" waged unrelenting political war against the Thaksin-affiliated government, to the point of occupying Bangkok's two main airports stranding thousands of businessmen and tourists. Eventually, the constitutional court disqualified enough MPs so that the anti-Thaksin forces could gain a slim majority in parliament under Prime Minister Abhist Vejjajiva. Turmoil continued as the ousted faction, now known as "red shirts" from their adapted attire, stormed the venue of a meeting Asian ministers at a resort, requiring some to be evacuated by helicopter. As the new decade opened, Thailand faced new challenges, not the least being the likely death of their beloved King Bhumibol, 82, and an uncertain royal transition.
When Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, many wondered whether Hong Kong people would stand up for the freedoms they still enjoyed under "one-country, two systems." That they could and would was demonstrated spectacularly when in 2003 half a million people took to the streets to protest implementation of the part of the territorial constitution that required it to enact laws against subversion, treason and preservation of state secrets. The government quickly dropped the proposed law, and it has not been revived (although neighboring Macau, much more accommodating to China, passed its enabling law without any fuss). In 2009 some 150,000 people turned out for the candle light observances on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.