Its nations are independent, and its citizens are sovereign in unprecedented numbers. Standards of living, education and personal freedom have soared. Asian businesses straddle the world, even after the crippling body-blow of the recent economic crisis. And Asian cultures are celebrated with renewed pride and enthusiasm. Of course, this is not to say that everything about Asia is a model for the rest of the world.
Poverty continues to haunt many cities and the countryside.
Authoritarian rulers still weigh heavy on many populations. Tolerance of dissenting views is not found everywhere. Nor is transparency in government or business. But by nearly every measure, Asians as a whole have never had better lives or more reason to hope for the future. Such has been the scale and the speed of this epic transformation, the task of understanding its full significance will perhaps have to be left to the historians - even though many of us or our parents were part of the process.