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By 2022, China is expected to cede the dubious distinction of being the world's most populous nation to India, according to the population division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the West, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society.

China has lunged into the 21st century, while India is still lurching toward it.

The fact that the Bush administration, and those in Europe who have followed its 9/11-inspired agenda, somehow believe that the future of the world is being played out in the Middle East and Central Asia rather than East Asia has only served to accelerate China's rise and the U.S.'s decline.

Now, I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West.

I am firmly convinced that, in future years, China and India will join hands in playing a more active role in maintaining peace and stability in the region and the world at large and make due contribution to the cause of human progress and development.

Peace and security in the Asia-Pacific will turn on whether China emerges as a xenophobic, chauvinistic force, bitter and hostile to the West because it tried to slow down or abort its development, or whether it is educated and involved in the ways of the world - more cosmopolitan, more internationalized and outward looking.

A lot of people, including business leaders, think the future belongs to China. Globalization is not a zero-sum game, but we need to hone our skills to stay in play.

China has to go along with world trends. That's democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.

I don't have doctrinaire views about how we should relate to Asia. But novelists reflect the world they live in, and that world propels you, to some extent. I'm a creature of the British Empire, and of the period of transition from the Empire.