"Asia now stands at the dawn a new history of civilization to create its own future, finally emerging from the long tunnel of 150 years of westernization and overcoming the ideological conflicts of the twentieth century. Having achieved advanced industrialization based on market economics in the latter half of the twentieth century, the region is now home to some 900 million people in the middle class and about 1.1 billion 'netizens' connected by the Internet. Within certain East Asian countries, civil society and democracy are flourishing. Now, China and the ASEAN nations are progressing on their own courses. East Asia is on the verge of birthing a new era marked by civil society and democracy."