By the end of this century, more than 60% of humanity will live on the landmass of Asia. Out of some 3.75 billion Asians most will still be relatively poor: one in every three will be Chinese and on in every four Indian.

By contrast, the rich will be relatively few: perhaps 130m Japanese; 80m Koreans
(assuming the reunification by then of the peninsula's North and South); 3 million in Singapore; 25 million Chinese in Taiwan; and 6 million Chinese (barring any influx of migrants from China) in Hong Kong.  Their quality of life will be matched or exceeded in the region only by the Australians And new Zealanders, whose claims to be part of Asia are recent and often disputed.

Discrepancies of wealth tend to breed conflict.  But if history is a guide, it is Asia's poor who will suffer most.  In the early 1990s poverty was the common denominator in all the  region's areas of conflict, be they in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, or Tajilistan.  The same was true of the stubborn but ineffectual, communist insurgency in the Philippines. Meanwhile, Asia's various secessionist movements are invariably connected with underdeveloped economies, whether they be the Papuans in Indonesia's Irian Jaya or the Sikhs in India's Punjab.

One general lesson is that any country that fails to increase living standards risks violent unrest.  A second lesson is that fast-growing populations and fast-rising living standards are incompatible.  The typical Singapore women during her child-bearing years will have two children ( indeed, statistically slightly under two); her Filipina counterpart will have four; and a Laotian or Bangladeshi perhaps six.  yet when their wealth is compared, the differences are multiplied: per head economic output in Singapore is roughly 75 times the rate in Laos.

To put the same point another way: as "total fertility rates" - the number of children a women will bear in her fertile years-decline, so prosperity increases.  Singapore's rate has dropped steeply from 4.7 in 1965; Bangladesh's rate has fallen only slightly from 6.8.

Such demographics calculations have had a tremendous impact in Asia, and will continue to do so.  In 1960 the Philippine population, for example, was almost 30 million; by 1990 it has doubled; and by 2010 it is estimated that it will almost have tripled.

For political leaders such exponential growth in population poses near-impossible
challenges to provide adequate employment, housing, education and health care.  If they fail, the consequence is likely to be social instability.

The country most aware of this is the People's Republic of China.  Although Mao Zedong once preached that "people are the most valuable resource"- so the more the better - since 1979 china has pursued a " one child " Policy, often with Draconian strictness.  One consequence has been a huge drop in the fertility rate; another has been a generation of spoilt single children ( especially boys, because of female infanticide ); a third is likely, in the future, to be a society demographically distorted, with too few young to provide economically for the elderly.

No country, whether for cultural, religious or political reasons, is likely to imitate China's dictatorial approach to family planning.  Some, like Singapore ( which is now trying to increase its population growth, so effective were past efforts to decrease it), will use financial incentives.  most will hope that better education will lead to declining birth rates ( the evidence is that when women become literate they have fewer children ).  But better education cannot come without economic development.  The challenge, therefore, is for the poor countries of Asia to emulate the success of rich Asia.

In the early 1980s Asia's share of the world economy was roughly one fifth; by the end of the 1980s it was over a quarter; and by the end of the century it will be around a third.  By almost every yardstick Asia has been home to the most impressive economic growth in history: Japan, China, and the "Asian dragons" of Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore And Taiwan have all managed, since the end of second world war, to double their economic output within a single decade, and have done so more than once.  By contrast, no country - not even America in the last century, had managed it even once before.

One feature of Asia's economic success after 1945 is that the miracle have occurs mainly in East and South-East Asia.  The reasons are several.  Japan was already an advanced and highly industrialized country, and its recovery was helped by the restructuring carried out under the aegis of the American occupation.  In addition, development was given a boost by land reform programs imposed in South Korea by the Americans and in Taiwan by the incoming Kuomintang.  but probably the most important reasons are Confucianist culture - with its stress on consensus and obedience to authority - and the propensity to save.  This combination helped China's economy, even during the doctrinaire era of Mao Zedong, to grow almost twice as fast as India's.

Confucianism, however, has no hold beyond East Asia and the Chines Diaspora ( whose influence runs from Myanmar across to the Philippines).  Is non - Confucianist Asia therefore doomed to lag in relative poverty?  Rationally there is no reason why it should, or else how would have non-Confucianist Europe and America have advanced?  What is needed, however, is the freedom for market forces to reward the efficient.  Probably one of the biggest reasons for India's slow economic progress ( sometimes derided as the "Hindu rate of growth") was the post colonial, Fabian socialist obsession with protectionism and state control of the economy.  Only when India was in dire straits did Narasimha Rao's new
government  in 1991 have the political courage to begin economic and financial
deregulation.