The New Silk Roads: The New Asia and the Remaking of the World Order

by Peter Frankopan

Bangalore is an extreme case, but it is illustrative of the wider challenges facing urban growth as well as economic, demographic and even political stability in the future. The link between rapid urbanisation and radicalisation is one that is as familiar to historians of Russia in the early twentieth century as it is to those working on Turkey in the 1970s.55 Not surprisingly, it is also a subject of considerable interest to scholars working on the world of today and tomorrow.56 A recent UN report on cities did not pull its punches. “Many cities all over the world,” it states, “are grossly unprepared for the multi-dimensional challenges associated with urbanisation.”57 Peace and stability are not to be taken for granted—as even the most cursory look at Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan show. The limited development of democratic traditions, the diffusion of power and wealth from small elites and the emergence of professional middle classes means that across Asia there is a series of powerful leaders—and obvious fragilities too that can mean states fail quickly and dramatically.

In the West, one of the most important contemporary questions concerns the monetisation of data—and about the legality and ethics of corporations like Facebook gathering and deploying information about users and even about users’ friends and contacts who are not on social networks. In the East, the issue is about the weaponisation of data and the relationship between the digital world and state interests, perceived or otherwise.