COUNTDOWN: TWENTY TRENDS RECASTING ASIA

So it would be for me and my colleagues at Asiaweek to be around in 2099 and witness in the 3-D, virtual-reality archives of a century hence how different the future will be from what we imagine it in the pages of this special Millennium double issue. Besides, being wrong about the future might just bring us good fortune, as it did to one William Gates III. His $90-billion net worth today would never have been if the co-founder of Microsoft had got it right in 1981 when he said of computer memory: "640K [kilobytes] ought to be enough for anybody." (His Microsoft Word software alone takes up more than eight times as much RAM.)

So fasten your mindbelts, suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride in this time machine powered by reasoned, expert imagining. Marking the way are 20 trends - political, economic, social, technological, lifestyle or just fun - that are likely to shape the region in the years, if not decades, ahead. Highlighted in bold through this essay, these AsiaTrends for 2000 and Beyond are not an exhaustive list of major objects, forces, factors and phenomena impacting on Asia. But each one will be a key element in Asian lives in the coming decade.

First stop is an invention that is racing to every corner of human living, expanding and linking our minds, creating new kinds of work and play - and (there's always a dark side, isn't there?) possibly threatening the modern world right on the very first day of the next millennium with a global electronic disaster such as humankind has never known before. Like the other trends, The Microchip holds both promise and peril for the future. Its astounding ability to enlarge its power as it shrinks in size offers the order, precision and reliability the region has prized for millennia. Yet like the king who lets his loyal prime minister rule more and more of his kingdom until he is monarch no more, we run the risk of one day abdicating too much thought, ethic and action to slivers of silicon.

Even now, we cannot imagine conducting, say, the millions of transactions making up daily commerce without billions of circuits cutting through its circuitous jungle. Human need amplified by greed will drive us to further speed up the generation of material wealth as fast as our chips can manage it - and with no time for caution, or the competition might beat us to it. There will be the same race in the arena of war, where the semiconductor has conferred advantages far more potent than tanks have over infantry. Thus, both making a living and making a killing will fall under the amoral, automated sway of bits and bytes.

It is no coincidence that the world's most powerful and richest nation is also far and away the global leader in developing and deploying the microchip. Rivals and admirers of the United States cannot but follow suit in the quest for ever greater and more ubiquitous computing clout. Along with electronic wizardry, however, Asia and the rest of the world eye two other secrets of American success. One is The Mind, or, to borrow a prefix from Apple Computer, the iMind. Innovative, independent, individualistic, interactive, iconoclastic and even impish - these are the traits that animate America's train of thought, which Asian nations now feel constrained to impart to future generations in order to be competitive in the globalized and wired economy of the future.

Which brings us to the third ingredient in the winning U.S. formula that looks set to be adopted by much of the region, albeit with a lot of kicking and screaming in the beginning: The Economy. The ruthlessly restructuring economy, to be exact. Its elements are pretty familiar to many Asian policymakers and business people by now. An intensely competitive environment. Capital markets that demand returns, returns, returns. Strict regulation to enforce financial soundness and a level playing field. And the resulting Three Cys: transparency, efficiency and, when necessary, bankruptcy. To grab their share of capital, companies have to be lean, mean and profitable, with accounts you can trust. Those that don't make the cut fall by the wayside for the receivers and asset-strippers to feast on.

Right now, it is the International Monetary Fund and its client Asian governments that are the new economic paradigm's main enforcers in the region. But well into the 21st century the primary catalyst for change will be The Investor - the increasingly Internet- and institution-linked globalizing army of savers constantly seeking better and better returns for their money. Asian companies that used to grow fat on easy loans, sweetheart deals and protected markets will in future have to really compete for capital and clientele. Investors and consumers meanwhile will enjoy wider choice of opportunities and products from different parts of the planet, thanks to freer trade, electronic commerce and Internet investing.

Also making a world of investor and consumer choices possible is The Money, especially the increasingly fluid electronic cash which buyers and savers can channel to a growing sweep of places with fewer restrictions at constantly falling charges. Unhappy with the price of laptops at your corner mall? Check the competition online and get the best deal. Fleeced by the local conglomerate over a transaction unfavorable to minority shareholders. Shift your savings via the Net to the latest dot.com venture skyrocketing on Nasdaq, at a fraction of the commission your human broker used to charge.

All this assumes, of course, that you're connected and liquid - not the unwired grunt who gets the boot when the chaebol trim down. Domestic enterprises may also feel the pressure from globalization, as multinationals with enormous economies of scale, financial resources and market clout muscle in. And the Asian Crisis has already shown us how bad things can get when the tides of global capital move against a country's markets and currency. So expect growing public pressure on Asian governments to moderate the pains and swings of the restructuring economy. Especially where democracy - The People - is gaining ground, which is pretty much everywhere in the region outside China and the countries on its borders.

Along with The People, another 2000 trend likely to help temper the excesses of globalizing business is something it helped create: The Network. Thanks to the media and telecommunications capacity or "bandwidth" put in place by behemoths of the industry, more and more people in more and more countries are able to draw from the global information pool, on radio, on TV and especially online. One result: opponents of multinational abuse have a global audience to preach to and rally to their cause. A green group campaigning against, say, a conglomerate that has polluted waterways and displaced indigenous tribes in Indonesia now has a better chance of getting a consumer boycott of the offender in its crucial Western markets.

The spread of both democracy and bandwidth has come none too soon, especially for The Earth, which will show worsening signs of humankind's abuse in the decades ahead if concerted regional or global action is not undertaken on major emerging crises, including the haze and deforestation in Southeast Asia. From record temperatures and unprecedented tempests to suffocating smog and killer floods, environmental degradation is exacting a higher price - and getting harder to keep out of the public's radar. So are concerns about The Food and The Body, as genetic engineering brings amazing edibles and wonder cures to our homes - along with the fears and foul-ups that accompany anything new.

Also likely to gain from greater freedom and global connections is the struggle to bring more equality to The Sexes; advocates of women's rights and welfare can build common cause with feminists worldwide. In addition, the more competitive business environment and capital markets will force companies to hire and promote the best talent, female or male. On the other hand, The People and The Network would put pressure on one centuries-old institution in Asia: The Dynasty. Not only will Asian democrats frown upon privileged elite families; the more competitive financial environment to be ushered in by the Internet will not take kindly to family enterprises that put bloodline over bottom line. To be sure, dynasties won't disappear, but to stay on top, they have to deliver the political or business goods, not just sport a famous name.

Will all this change the Asia of the past millennia - The Soul and its indelible preoccupation with fate, face and family? From the Arabian desert to Japan's sacred Mount Fuji, from snowbound Siberia to tropical Timor, a deep-seated sense of some inviolable universal order or being has eternally dominated the Asian's view of life and the world. And in home and community, the way people regard him and his family - the face they gave him - has been of paramount importance, often far more than comfort, wealth, health, even life. But as one Asian nation after another adopted modern ways, many of them from the West, science and technology has eroded fate's sway, and the city's sprawl has sliced extended households into nuclear ones with no closely knit village community to approve or reprove them.

Now, life in The Metropolis, while more dazzling than ever in its affluent parts, is compounding pressures on The Family, with parents often having to work long hours or in faraway places, divorced from their growing children. Adding to the divide is the explosion of American media, captivating the young of Asia with images, songs and stories that celebrate the individual seeking his own joy, challenging authority, breaking with the past, rushing the future. Whether Madonna's "Material Girl" or the fiery, icebound lovers in Titanic, Michael Jordan of Chicago or the bodies of Baywatch, the message is anything but the old Asian way of reverence for the ancestral past and deference to the surrounding community. Moreover, as Asia ages, with later generations having to support more and more elderly, families will find it harder to maintain filial devotion.

Is all this bad? Not a few will say, good riddance to traditional tenets of blind obedience to authority, of fatalism and face-saving, and of subservience to the male of the species. Devotion to the family and conformity to the community, they would add, should leave room for individual happiness and the welfare of the nation, not just one's clan, village, region or ethnic group. On the other hand, few will argue for adopting Western ways wholesale, especially the more aggressive or amoral aspects. Indeed, many in the West see much to admire and emulate in Asia, particularly the discipline and social cohesion of Japan and Singapore, which help keep them largely crime-free. Which suggests that the future ways of Asian, if not global, society could be an amalgam of the best traits and traditions from around the world.

The Vacation - the coming explosion in travel - will accelerate that trend toward a world culture melding ingredients from all over. So will The Jobs: as electronic commerce explodes, so will the ranks of people staffing its zillions of terminals and dealing with businesses and buyers from a multiplicity of countries. There is nothing like direct contact among people in different places to boost understanding and diminish prejudice, fear and friction. The Design, too, will bridge cultures separated by time and space, incorporate, for instance, ancient Chinese furniture into an avant-garde California dwelling. Architects, artists and other designers of human habitats, apparel and other objects of use will increasingly display local and national styles to the world, which will then incorporate more motifs, colors and other elements of particular aesthetics into border-crossing mainstream forms. In sum, Asian styles, like Western ones before it, will go global in decades to come, enriching a common design heritage.

The confluence of cultures in the next millennium, along with the globalization of economies, capital markets and communications networks, will hopefully help tame The Power struggle always simmering and sometimes blazing among rival nations in Asia, including China, Japan, India, Russia and the United States. It's harder to go to war against another country (though not impossible, of course) when its citizens live, dress, eat and enjoy themselves much the way you do. Or if you are in regular Internet contact with people in that country, or hope to do business there. As for ideological differences, they also would be less likely to spark a shooting war when there is constant communication between rival nations, whose ideologues will at least be better aware of the thinking behind each other's views.

In Asia's future balance of power, the need for mutual understanding is most crucial between China and America, which are virtually antitheses of each other. One is the world's oldest nation, with millennia of authoritarian rule and reverence for tradition behind it. The other is the youngest major power on earth, all of 223 years, founded and settled by people fleeing the past, cherishing individual liberty and constantly seeking new frontiers. If the two can somehow learn to accept and even learn from each other, not only will world peace be more secure. The entente may even usher in a new civilization in the next millennium combining the best from the Old and New Worlds. Maybe our grandchildren will call it Asiamerica.

There is one more trend to mention, though many might prefer to leave it unsaid: The Classes, or as the indelicate may put it, the haves and have-nots. If there is one trend likely to pose the biggest challenge in the new millennium, it is the chasm between rich and poor, within and among countries. This eternal enormity drives people to strip the earth bare, commit crime, and wage war and revolution. In global terms, it could well plant the seeds of a future superpower rivalry between the wealthy West under the United States and the needy rest of the world, led by China. On the other hand, both rich and poor could harness the technological wonders now set to blossom in our time to banish hunger, disease and ignorance. As in millennia past, the choice is ours.

WASHINGTON
U.S. secretary of state says China should be 'tolerant'

MANILA
Philippine government denies Estrada's claim to presidency

ALLAHABAD
Faith, madness, magic mix at sacred Hindu festival

COLOMBO
Land mine explosion kills 11 Sri Lankan soldiers

TOKYO
Japan claims StarLink found in U.S. corn sample

BANGKOK
Thai party announces first coalition partner

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TIME:

COVER: President Joseph Estrada gives in to the chanting crowds on the streets of Manila and agrees to make room for his Vice President

THAILAND: Twin teenage warriors turn themselves in to Bangkok officials

CHINA: Despite official vilification, hip Chinese dig Lamaist culture

PHOTO ESSAY: Estrada Calls Snap Election

WEB-ONLY INTERVIEW: Jimmy Lai on feeling lucky -- and why he's committed to the island state

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ASIAWEEK:

COVER: The DoCoMo generation - Japan's leading mobile phone company goes global

Bandwidth Boom: Racing to wire - how underseas cable systems may yet fall short

TAIWAN: Party intrigues add to Chen Shui-bian's woes

JAPAN: Japan's ruling party crushes a rebel ì at a cost

SINGAPORE: Singaporeans need to have more babies. But success breeds selfishness

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