'Asian Century:' A reality check

Book review of RESURGENT ASIA: Diversity in Development

In his 1968  magnum opus Asian Drama, the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal was wrongly pessimistic about Asia’s development prospects. That is the starting point of Deepak Nayyar’s  Resurgent Asia, which offers a panoramic vision of Asia’s economic transformation.   In 1968, Asia was the world’s poorest continent. Half a century later, its share of the world economy has risen from one-tenth of the world’s industrial production to one-third. Its gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP per capita are higher than those of industrialised countries, Africa and Latin America.  Asia is the source of one-third of world trade.   Literacy rates and life