Photo caption:
Near Lanzhou (Province of Gansou), an historical age landslide, going back no doubt to the 12th century, is occupied by a village surrounded by its terrace cultivation. In 1992, a secondary landslide took place at its lower part. It is reactivated every summer, at the monsoon time, blocking the road and threatening the bottom of the valley.
Asia : Immense, populated and deserted as well as opulent and poor, democratic and dictatorial, hyper-tech and in arrears, peace-loving and warlike, friendly and threatening. All these adjectives are accurate all at once because they concern countries so different and so remote that one is tempted to wonder if talking about Asia still makes sense. What is Asia ?
Geographically-speaking the traditional space of Asia as a continent represents 44 million km2 (i.e. 30% of the land above water level). The Réseau Asia – Asia Network, which was created at the MSH, has limited this space. It does not start at Bosphore and at the Suez Canal but it includes a group of countries from Afghanistan in the West, to Japan in the East, to the Far Eastern Russian Siberia in the North to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea in the South, a total of 32 countries. This deliberately limited space brings together countries that share values and moral, political or religious influences. For example it is Buddhism which, starting from the Northern part of India has spread till far away Japan across China and Korea. It is Confucianism whose influence is so great in China where it was born but also in Korea, Japan and Vietnam in what we call Asia of chopsticks because rice is eaten there since a few hundred years. It is spreading of moral and religious ideas but also movement of goods like silk, plants like rice, born probably in India and that one cultivates even in the North in the Japanese Hokkaidô. The Asians also drink tea every day. Faces, ways of living, relation with time and the others bring out the differences and common points.
The dynamism of the countries, which is measured in terms of GDP or GNP, industrial production, technological innovation, raw materials and growth rates takes Asia into a world competition whose perverse effects is sometimes felt cruelly. And one often remembers of Asia only its performances or its failures, its progression or its decline. However this Asia in the grip of armed conflicts, violent dictatorship like in North Korea is also the Asia of democracy, already established in Japan, recent in Korea or Taiwan. In one or two decades it is highly probable that it will be the formidable challenger of the two big advanced industrial poles that the United States and Europe are. These two Western cultures represent today more than half of the world GNP. Today there is Europe 15, Europe 27 tomorrow to which will be added big Russia the day after tomorrow maybe. In all, more than 780 million inhabitants.
The United States within the framework of its exchange agreement, ALENA, with Mexico and Canada represents a big market with a high purchasing power. But Asia is also there and will occupy a place every year going from strength to strength within the industrialized world and among the financially and militarily strong countries. The growth rate of India and China, taking only the two most populated countries of Asia, is 7% per year on an average and their two populations put together approach two and a half billion individuals. In a world of economic context where the people are also consumers, the market space that Asia represents is colossal.
And even if everything cannot be measured with the sole yardstick of economic performance indicators, they are nevertheless crucial because growth conditions stability and promotes emergence of middle classes, a breeding ground for democracy to take lasting root. This modernity develops in non Western countries, with varied languages and cultures. It is important to understand their diversities and their points of convergence at the same time. What are the connections between Tibet and Mongolia between Nepal and Vietnam, between Indonesia and India? It is the ambition of the Réseau Asia – Asia Network to contribute to the endeavour of increasing the prestige of teachers and long-term researches on Asia and to participate in increasing the number of exchanges between scholars and experts. An extensive database will enable each one to appreciate the work of the other better and will promote transversal studies capable of making the contours of Asia stand out not only in its past but also in its evolution. The Réseau Asia – Asia Network wishes to combine the most diverse skills: history, sociology or anthropology for example, could help understand a fact better than the interchangeable explanations that are bogged down in the here and now. Asia is old, extremely varied and shows a great promising future. All the skills, all the knowledge are required to help better understand the rapid evolution of one half of the world population. |
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30/12/14
from 01/04/12 to 31/03/13
