Asia encounters four strategic challenges

Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Prime Minister of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur

Asia is a big place, home to three-fifths of the planet's population. Unlike other continents that have achieved a measure of integration, Asia's nations and peoples are not homogeneous. We are made up of different ethnic groups and adhere to different religions. Our respective governance, economic and legal systems cover a broad spectrum. Our levels of development are at wildly differing levels.

Asia's agenda will therefore be commensurately enormous, and commensurately diverse. Japan's agenda will be completely different from Sri Lanka's; Vietnam's from Indonesia's. We must be duly cautious about generalizations as we look at the big picture and focus on the most pressing continental issues.

Against this background, I would like to highlight four strategic and fundamental challenges confronting Asia.

First, it is imperative for us to focus our attention on eradicating poverty. Asia has a number of relatively affluent nations. Some of the world's most dynamic economies are in Asia. However, anyone looking at Asia cannot ignore its multitudes of poor. It is estimated that about one in every five Asians -- close to 600 million people -- suffers from the effects of poverty. Hunger and even famine are still common occurrences in some countries. Therefore, it would be a tragic omission if Asia did not place poverty eradication at the very top of its agenda.

The good news for Asia is that it is indeed making great progress in this sphere, if only because countries like China and India, the two nations with the largest numbers of poor, are making impressive strides in developing their economies.

Many Asian countries missed out on the industrial revolution. We were seen mainly as suppliers of raw materials and natural resources to the furnaces and factories owned by our colonial masters. Even after achieving independence, we could not actively participate because we lacked the funds and the capacity to do so.

Now the information age is upon us. Information technology and telecommunications are bringing us closer together and allowing us to accomplish tasks more quickly and efficiently. These advances and innovations are enabling leaps in productivity that we never thought possible. It has been proven that information and communications technology can be a new source of prosperity.

A second critical challenge involves human development. Any program to eradicate large-scale poverty must involve the wider issue of human development. We must focus not only on raising income levels, critical though this is, because it is the key to enjoying a better quality of life. We must also aim for satisfactory access to good education and high literacy, adequate health services and clean water, to cite just a few of the core requirements.

To date, only eight Asian nations are deemed to have "high human development", a classification by the UN Development Program that measures a country's achievements in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income.

Nations pursuing economic prosperity cannot ignore their most valuable resource -- their own people. As we progress and embark upon knowledge-driven growth, the cultivation of our human resources becomes even more critical. We must be prepared to foster a quality education system supplemented by skills training and life-long learning facilities; we must be prepared to allocate the unavoidably substantial resources required for that purpose. In every country, education and skills development will be the key to human and economic development. Once we have developed our infrastructure and built the hardware, it is equally important to concentrate on developing the "software".

At the heart of human development, therefore, is economic growth and economic prosperity, and any nation that does not give the utmost priority to achieving prosperity -- equitably shared across society -- will not achieve high human development.

The third critical challenge facing Asia, to my mind, is the need to develop good governance structures -- by the state, the private sector and by civil society. Of the three, the most important will undoubtedly be good governance by the state. Despite the diminution of its role as a result of the empowerment of non-state actors and globalization, the state remains the most powerful and most influential force, a force that has the greatest capacity to act for good as well as bad.

Good governance involves many things: Governments dedicated to the welfare of the people and serving them; efficient and responsive delivery systems; financial prudence, government, business and society free of corruption; transparency and accountability; businesses with a healthy social conscience and not solely fixated upon profit making.

Fostering the right values and norms, formulating just and effective laws, and building healthy and working institutions are fundamental to good governance.

The fourth challenge for Asia is to ensure regional peace and stability. Rare indeed are the parts of Asia that enjoy peace and stability. Many countries in Asia are still vulnerable to ethnic and religious tensions, autonomy and separatist pressures, and militancy and terrorism.

In the external sphere, our borders are less settled than those in Europe, which effectively settled them through two bloody wars in the last century. In this light, our agenda must allow for the peaceful resolution of all boundary and territorial disputes, on land as well as at sea. We must similarly work hard to peacefully resolve the issue of divided states and territories.

A lack of trust and confidence -- a legacy of past wars and occupation as well as present disputes -- still bedevil regional relationships in some parts of our continent. We must work toward building trust and confidence, focusing on the future rather than dwelling on the past. We must continue to bring about the reconciliation of Asia, by extending the hand of amity and rejecting the specter of enmity.

Our best hope for an Asia at peace with itself and with the rest of the world lies in the pursuit of a two-pronged approach. One is the addressing of root causes of tensions and conflicts at home and between states. The other is through the strengthening of a regional and global architecture for peace and security, one that is founded upon respect for international law and norms, and cooperative security.

I am confident Asia possesses the building blocks for success. We have ample natural resources and an ample population. We can be guided by a rich heritage of culture and civilization, as well as an impressive recent history of economic growth. Our surviving years of conflict and colonization are testament to our resilience and fortitude.

Asia is now a truly independent continent and its destiny is in its own hands. We have the opportunity to shape the future. Let us grasp this opportunity and make Asia's agenda one for growth and progress, an agenda that empowers our people to become active and productive players on the world stage.

This article is a condensed version of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's speech delivered recently in Kuala Lumpur before a conference hosted by the Asia News Network with the support of the Konrad Adenauer Stichtung.