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Because the position of Asia in world affairs is rising, Karin Dean, a Senior Research Fellow in the TU Asian studies department, asks whether Asia as such, even exists.

“People have started to call the current century the “Century of Asia”. This is mainly because of the powerful growth of the economy and the consumerism in such countries as China and India, located to the east of us,” explained Karin Dean, a Senior Research Fellow in the TU Department of Asian Studies.

An Asia that one could fear - a compact economic or cultural sphere or a system of shared political value - does not actually exist. Also, there is no religion, organisation of power, dominant language or a system of social and political values that would justify referring to Asia as a unified region. It is precisely the diversity of languages, cultures and religions that is the common characteristic of the large continent located to the east of us. Dean also thinks that the locals would agree to such a presentation of Asia and that this approach would help us to understand them better.

There are about 50 countries in Asia, India and China being only the two largest. Already a small fragment of Asia, The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the surface and population of which is similar to the European Union, offers a huge multitude of political forms. Among its ten countries there is a traditional Islamic sultanate, a couple of democratic republics, a couple of constitutional monarchies, and even some communist single-party systems.

“As elsewhere in the world, people living eastwards from us fight for their rights and are against government, corruption or injustice – whether these are called “fights in the name of democracy” as in Europe or something else. But everything has its own context,” says Dean.