Power, it is universally acknowledged, is shifting to Asia. What that really means, however, is that the continent’s biggest countries, China and India, are at last modernizing and achieving sustained economic development, just as Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan did before them. With their development comes increased influence, importance, and capabilities. All this will make the old-established powers of the West no less capable, influential, or important—but they will be a lot less dominant.

Economic development is, after all, a process of disruptive transformation: economies double in size every seven to ten years, and hundreds of millions of people cease to be powerless peasants and become urbanites with far wider choices and far more influence. Economic development is also a process that makes private power centers—that is, companies—bigger and more independent of the state.

These social changes are already under way in China and have begun transforming India. In three decades’ time, they will either have produced some sort of political explosion that will disrupt economic development or—it may in fact be and—they will have forced the political authorities to adjust to them.

To put it more simply, in 2040 China is likely to be some sort of democracy, with a government accountable to its people and depending on them for the bulk of its tax revenues, as it does not today. That will make the country a better, freer place but won’t necessarily make it easier for the rest of the world to deal with it.

A China with an accountable government will probably be as self-centered and often inward-looking as America—only more so. Though ambitious, China will still feel weak, and sometimes vulnerable, for it will remain a lot poorer and less technologically advanced than America or Japan. What’s more, it may well have substantial internal-security problems with its restive minorities, such as those in Tibet and Xinjiang. China in 2040 could thus be a rather edgy, nationalistic democracy.

As for India, economic development will produce a more outward-looking politics and public opinion. As a result, the country could well care much more than it does today about issues of culture, rights, and national identity in neighboring lands with which Indians feel an affinity—such as Tibet (now a part of China) and Myanmar. A major spat over, say, Tibet at the succession to the current Dalai Lama is far from impossible. Water is another likely source of conflict because of the melting of the Himalayan glaciers on which both India and China rely.

Given such issues, ambitions, and suspicions, two things matter for geopolitics. First, India must substantially improve its relationship with its South Asian neighbors, which should also share in the process of economic development. Otherwise, India will forever be dogged by separatism and insurgency along its borders, by terrorism deep inside the country, and by suspicions of excessive Chinese influence in its backyard.

Second, by 2040 Asia’s great powers—China, India, and Japan—must develop regional institutions both for economic and security issues. These institutions, which will develop only if none of the three powers believes it can dominate the region, may not be able to pool sovereignty and legal structures as much as the European Union has, for China, India, and Japan are all so large and self-regarding they will find it extremely hard to give up that much sovereignty. Nonetheless, some sort of Asian Union is vital for a stable balance of power, which is extremely important to reassure Asia’s smaller, weaker countries that they will not be bullied.

Such a balance is especially important for Japan. Under the stimulus of Chinese competition and fear of long-term national decline, Japan will probably find ways during the next three decades to revive its birth rate and make its economy much more flexible and innovative. But the country will certainly feel vulnerable to Chinese pressure, even when—perhaps especially when, given China’s nationalistic public opinion—China has become some sort of democracy. Furthermore, Japan’s fears may well be heightened either by the political unification of the Korean peninsula under Chinese influence or by the replacement of North Korea’s Kim dynasty with a new, Chinese-backed military regime.

So Japan will seek protection in alliances and regional institutions, designed—to paraphrase the famous line about NATO—to keep China down, India in, and the Americans happy. America will not be comfortable operating in a world where China and India must be treated as its economic and political equals, as it will have to do. But it will be as happy as it can reasonably expect to be if those newly powerful Asian countries are at peace with each other and their neighbors, if they are not ganging up against America, and if they emerge as new, influential advocates of a world of rules, open markets, and strict limits to the use of force.

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