Looking east

Gideon Rachman says that because of its sheer size, it is China that began to shift the whole axis of the global economy. NICK J.B. More / For China Daily

British scribe Gideon Rachman writes a new book to tell the West about the shift in the balance of power, Andrew Moody reports.

Gideon Rachman believes the balance of world power is now inexorably tilting eastward.

In his new book, Easternisation, to be published in August, the journalist argues this could be a pivotal point in history.

This rise in Asia started with Japan and South Korea and then moved to South East Asia but the real transformative event was when China joined the process of rapid industrialization, he says.

"Because of its sheer size China began to shift the whole axis of the global economy," Rachman, who has been chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times for the past decade, tells China Daily in his office in London.

The Asian domination is an almost inevitable trend and would have happened much quicker if it hadn't been for the 20th-century rise of the United States, he believes.

Rachman, 53, felt the need to write the book because many in the West still do not acknowledge the shift in the global balance.

"There is an element of denial in the West about what is happening. I actually get two different reactions to the book though. The first is that there is nothing new in a sort of "rise of Asia book" since people have been going on about it for 20 years. The second acknowledges the trend but says it is all a bit of an exaggeration," he says.

The author says during the writing of the book his own perspective also changed.