Asian G20 Countries Want More Say

The Associated Press ran a story this morning, picked up and run prominently in Manila and elsewhere, about how the big Asian countries who belong to the G20 want "more input" into how the world is run.

http://tinyurl.com/nrjbeh

Based on GDP, China is at the forefront of this group, with Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, and Indonesia also in the group. Everyone will have a chance to make their voices heard in the upcoming G20 summit in Pittsburgh.

Australia is a Western country located near Asia, and twins with Canada a low-population, resource-rich member of the British Commonwealth. As the world once again re-focuses on scarce resources and the impact of their use, Australia does have the opportunity to be influential despite having an economy that can seem anachronistic in the hip, 21st century Internet Age.

And not for nothing, Australia and Canada are two nations that don't generally mind welcoming immigrants and integrating them into their societies.

I throw this out there because Japan is among the more exclusive societies in the world, traditionally even loathing as gaijin the nisei/sansei/yonsei (children of Japanese parents and grandparents) who visit Japan.

Anyone who's visited Japan knows that the word "gaijin" is often pronounced in a guttural way that makes it sound like an English equivalent of "turdface" or something of that nature.

A recent seismic shift in Japanese politics is the first serious threat in years to end the two-decade economic stagnation here, caused by the rigid, iron-gripped stranglehold of government bureaucrats and big business on society.

But the political shift was accomplished by an appeal to the day in/day out cares of ordinary Japanese, rather than some vision of global integration.

South Korea, still getting a grip on its recent economic success and how to use it most effectively on the world stage, has fought hard over many centuries to prevent being dominated by its neighbors. Koreans are justifiably proud of their "scientific" writing system, which has brought an ease of literacy in a difficult language.

Pronunciation remains a problem. Koreans are on a par with the French in their trouble in making themselves understood in English. On the flipside, even a simple word such as "Seoul" is confounding to non-Koreans; it sounds more like "czar" when pronounced properly than the "soul" of its English transliteration.

Koreans work tremendously hard to overcome the language barrier. The people are bracingly direct, more like Westerners than most in Asia. The country has a stable democracy, and has shown much patience with the continuing misery of being a divided nation and insanity of the North Korean government.

It encourages foreign invesment, and works hard to be a reliable trading partner, whether selling integrated circuits, cars, or animation. It vies with the U.S. to have the world's greatest computer-game players. It's hard to imagine South Korea some day being a pluralistic society, but you never know. The country wants to host a G20 summit. It wants to do something about the gap between rich and poor nations. It does seem ready to assume a louder voice in global affairs.

The desires of China and India to have a larger role are driven primarily by population, of course.

China already exerts a large geopolitical role; its efforts in the next several years will likely be related to trade and preserving the wealth it has earned through exports and floating the never-ending debt of the U.S. The elephant in the room remains the country's terrifically undervalued currency, and the economic disruption that might ensue should anyone get serious about addressing the issue.

India remains frustrated in not being taken seriously enough. But the country is best-known in recent years as a place where outsourcing has not been successful. The financial crash in the U.S. hurt Indian outsourcing tremendously. The disappointments routinely experienced by Silicon Valley companies in locating offices throughout India have created a climate of mutual distrust, whether high-level executives acknowledge this or not.

India did have its own U.S.-style thievery scandal when the CEO of upcoming outsourcer Satyam allegedly ran off with a billion or so dollars. Should the Indian outsourcing industry hold steady through the economic crisis and this particular scandal, the country may be ready to move upstream and become a leader in future years.

That leaves Indonesia, the largest country in my favorite region of Southeast Asia. A recent terrorist attack on a hotel there was a terrible thing, but is unlikely to scare off big investors.

The country remains a laggard in its use and development of IT, but has created a stable democracy for 240 million people out of the ashes of decades of totalitarian rule. As the world's largest Muslim country, it is sensitive about portraying itself as a reliable, conservative place rather than a hateful, radical one.

As always, political and religious leaders foment dissent and violence among people who really just want to build decent lives for themselves and their children, as is the case throughout the world, including in the "secular" U.S.

The globalization cat is out of the bag. The cat will remain free, despite a rash of recent protectionist barriers quickly slapped together in the recent recession, as pointed out by Global Trade Alert. The cat may have lost a life or two in the decade since the first big anti-globalization protests in Seattle in 1999.

But it has many lives left, and is being fed by the newly-wealthy countries in the G20 and a second group of about 30 countries that aspire for more wealth and influence.

Government leaders in these places have seen that their governments become stronger as their people become less miserable. The old tirades of how colonialization by the West ruined everything are being replaced by efforts to sell things to the West, and increasingly, to one another.

It seems to be generally agreed that the days of the post-WWII old-boys' club running the world are over. Even most of the old boys agree with this. But there's more to leadership than making money. The upcoming G20 meeting will show how well the aspiring leaders understand this, and to what degree the old guard believes them.