Nearly forty years ago, on a flight from Manila to Honolulu, I happened to sit next to an obese, talkative American who assured me that California was at that time the equivalent of Paris in the early 20th century and that the most interesting and innovative things happening in the world were happening there. He mentioned a place I had never heard of, Silicon Valley, and some computers with fabulous capabilities – there was no talk of new technology then – and he said that the train of the future was about to leave and that, because to lose it, you had to be aware of what was being cooked up by those troublemakers. He said it casually, as if he were stating an indisputable truism. It seemed to me a braggart and I ignored him, but the passage of time has shown that he was more right than a saint.
I remembered that conversation a few days ago, after reading the first PenÃnsules newsletter, by Enric Juliana, in which he evoked Josep Piqué’s statement that the center of the world is in the Strait of Malacca. Juliana was asking for opinions on the matter. Since I know the area because I lived in Kuala Lumpur for five years, I can’t resist giving my opinion.
There are concepts that are very subjective, and the center of the world is one of them. Many residents of New York are convinced that they step on it as soon as they leave the house, or even without leaving it, but Mark Twain once called them provincials, with the argument – not devoid of logic – that the inhabitants from their town in Missouri were always aware of what was going on in New York, while those in New York had no idea what was going on in Missouri.
What defines the center of the world? If the criterion is the habit of the inhabitants of the place in question to disregard the rest of the universe, then the center of the world is undoubtedly located in New York, London or Paris, with a small branch in Barcelona. But there are many other possible criteria, all equally debatable.
For that American on the flight to Honolulu, the matter did not admit of discussion: the center of the world was in California, because the great changes of the future were brewing there. And he was not without a bit of reason. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon and most of the new technological empires that rule the screens we have become addicted to have come out of California.
In these forty years, no comparable company has been created in Europe. But even so, we Europeans, deep down, remain convinced that, with or without the internet, the Old Continent is and will be for a long time the center of the world, because it is the most civilized place and because, no matter how many prodigies are invented , the weight of history will not evaporate. If we had to be born again and could choose where, wouldn’t we choose Europe?
Those of us who have lived outside of Europe, however, know that the Old Continent does not count as much as we think. In the Far East, world maps circulate in which Asia is located in the center, with Europe on one side and America on the other. At first they clash a little, but it is a vision as logical as ours, or perhaps more, especially considered from there.
When I lived there, I didn’t have the impression of being at the center of the world. Kuala Lumpur is a very nice city, or at least it was twenty years ago, very cosmopolitan, but none of the city’s residents felt like they were in the center of anything. They spend more smoke in Singapore, but I also don’t think they think they live in the navel of the universe. Someone will say that those who really live in the center of something never usually notice it, and maybe they will be right. I do not know.
The statement of Josep Piqué – a man with a very lucid mind who I don’t know where he found the time to do everything he did and do it so conscientiously – is based on a very specific fact: he passes through the Straits of Malacca 60% of world maritime traffic. It is a weighty argument, no doubt. The Straits of Malacca is the required route between two giants, China and India, trade between which has always been easier by sea than by land, due to the physical Himalayas and the geopolitical Himalayas that separate them .
But today a large part of world trade goes by other routes: by land, by air and, increasingly, by the Internet. Neither oil nor liquefied gas can be sold online, but the products that are transforming the world can. Quantitatively, then, it is quite possible that the Malacca Strait is one of the first arteries of the world economy, and perhaps the first. But qualitatively it is more debatable.
Josep Piqué, however, did not say it in a literal sense, and Enric Juliana, if I am not mistaken, neither. When they say that the center of the world is in the Straits of Malacca, what they are saying is that Europe has ceased to be and that the economic progress of Asia – of China, of India, of Vietnam, from Indonesia – is changing everything, and they are right. Europe loses gas and the conviction of Europeans to be the center of the world is increasingly resembling that of the Chinese a hundred years ago, who despite the decadence and poverty in which they lived were convinced, innocently, that China continued to be the Central Empire.
If I were today on a long-haul flight with a young man as clueless as I was forty years ago and asked for advice on the best place to catch the train of the future, I would tell him that the train of the future no one knows where it will depart from , but I wouldn’t think it would be a bad idea to look for him around the Straits of Malacca. What for us is still a hypothetical future – and not necessarily idyllic, alert -, in many places in Asia is already the present.
