Growing divides in Asia and the wider world leave young people struggling to connect

A decade ago, Asia’s millennials were optimistic the region would set aside conflicts and become more united to meet global challenges such as climate change
Today’s Generation Z, who grew up amid rising geopolitical tensions and major economic disruptions, are no longer so hopeful

Janet Pau

Published: 6:45am, 15 Mar 2023

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More than 10 years ago, 400 young, educated Asians in their 20s and early 30s wrote about what they saw as Asia’s challenges in the 2020s. A book I co-authored, Through the Eyes of Tiger Cubs: Views of Asia’s Next Generation, drew on selected excerpts from their essays to reveal the hopes and concerns of this generation of young adults who were born between 1978 – when Deng Xiaoping initiated China’s economic reform – and the early 1990s. This cohort is generally called Generation Y or millennials. We called them the Asian “tiger cubs”.

Many grew up in Asia’s high-performing tiger economies that benefited immensely from global economic integration. Most tiger cubs came of age during a time of relative peace and rising prosperity. They have protective baby boomer parents who knew hunger and poverty, and who often used their new-found affluence to ensure their children would be competitive enough to make the most of the opportunities they themselves never had.

Back then, young Asians were concerned about the region’s growing and ageing populations, pressure on food, water and energy resources, as well as the looming crisis of climate change.

They hungered for stronger regional solutions while lamenting that international leaders were not solving global environmental problems. They worried about widening inequality and emphasised the need to develop well-educated labour forces and an active market economy, to create more investment and job opportunities.

They looked confidently to a hopeful future where Asia would become more globally and regionally integrated. Asia would set aside regional conflicts and become more united, as economies aligned on a set of common values marked by pragmatism rather than ideology, perhaps through a pan-Asian organisation, a kind of Asian Union modelled after the European Union.

They thought of decoupling as a process where Asia could find new sources of growth and reduce its reliance on the West.

Students at Shanghai’s Fudan University attend their graduation ceremony in July 2011. Most Asian tiger cubs came of age during a time of relative peace and rising prosperity, under the protection of their baby boomer parents. Photo: Reuters

Fast forward a decade and the next cohort of young Asians today – called Generation Z or Zoomers – are living through more turbulent times amid a shifting global order.

While many were trained to compete by their disciplined Asian “tiger mums” (originally a self-mocking term coined in 2011 by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua), they find themselves in a world of work shaped by a perfect storm of geopolitical, climate, and public health shocks, which threaten to disrupt decades of growth and prosperity in Asia.

Their parents prepared them for a future with sophisticated, high-paying professional jobs. They graduated instead into economies with reduced demand for skilled labour.

This has been aggravated by a global trade slowdown, technology-driven productivity gains and job losses, and pandemic-induced disruptions. In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, an estimated 81 million jobs were wiped out in Asia, according to an International Labour Organization report, reversing decades of economic progress in the region.

Widening economic inequalities, coupled with soaring inflation, have fuelled greater populism in many countries. Young people have struggled with mental stress and loneliness triggered by strict pandemic lockdowns and social restrictions around Asia. Many were drawn into digital realities rife with misinformation and disinformation.

Young Asians’ fears and concerns are not that different from before – the complex challenges of ageing demographics, resource shortages, climate change and inequalities have, in some ways, become worse, not better. Yet that confidence about a more prosperous, more confident, and more united Asia is unlikely to be shared widely by this younger cohort.

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Young female activist leads fight to save forests and biodiversity in southwestern India

Calls for decoupling that the tiger cubs predicted have come true, but these calls are driven largely by the West, to reduce reliance on supply chains, notably from China. Economic policies around Asia have growing tendencies to prioritise ideology over pragmatism.

To prepare this young generation for leadership in a more fragmented and uncertain economy, current leaders in the public and private sectors will need to increase access to local economic opportunities. The pandemic and geopolitics have decimated industries that rely on global integration, leading young Asians to start small businesses and digital economy jobs not requiring travel.

Countries need to stay open to migrant talent, who can help diversify and upgrade economies. The next generation will be tackling worse versions of the same collective problems in Asia and the world, as many countries turn inward.

Current leaders must expand opportunities for people-to-people exchanges, to allow young Asians to work on core areas of international cooperation, including climate change, public health, culture and development.

Almost two decades ago, I wrote a chapter in another book, called Six Billion Minds. The book title pointed to the emerging knowledge economy driven by the convergence of business and technology, where educated talent from all over the world would thrive.

My chapter was about the global offshore outsourcing trend, which led to improved employment prospects for educated talent everywhere from India and China to the Philippines. With the advent of generative artificial intelligence, including ChatGPT, young Asian talent will need to master chatbot technology rather than be outcompeted by it.

Collectively, they will have to teach themselves and their next cohort to do what is essentially human – to be responsible and wise leaders, to dream, create and innovate, to adapt in uncertain and ambiguous situations, and to empathise with and care for fellow humans. Asia’s future depends on their success.

Janet Pau is executive director of the Asia Business Council