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operation because it strengthens our international bargaining position.
There is also scope for close co-operation in non- economic fields like culture and education. We should look at such co-operation against a wider historical perspective of economic and political change in the Pacific. The next century is likely to be the century of the Pacific and the economies of East and Southeast Asia will become the powerhouse of the global economy. What we are in fact witnessing is the emergence of an East Asian civilization which will help transform the world. This East Asian impact is not only economic, it is also cultural.
The West coast of North America and the whole of Australasia are
becoming increasingly Asianized. The steady migration of Asians to cities like Los Angeles, Vancouver and Sydney has accelerated this process and brought about profound changes in the host
communities. Let me cite some statistics to illustrate this
phenomenon. Using the latest US census results, the Asian population in the San Francisco-Oakland metropolitan statistical area (MSA) has increased from 10 per cent in 1980 to 16 per cent in 1990, in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area from six per cent to 10 per cent and in the Seattle-Everett area from four per cent to seven per cent. In Silicon Valley, the Asian population in San Jose has shot up from eight per cent in 1980 to 17 per cent in 1990. of the 70,000 or so engineers in the Valley 10,000 to 15,000 are ethnically Chinese. About 5,500 engineers, managers and other professionals are from India. If we look at British Columbia, the increase is equally dramatic. Ethnic Chinese alone, mostly Hongkongers, are already 27 per cent of Vancouver City's population of 560,000 and 15 per cent of the 1.5 million population of Metropolitan Vancouver. Some demographers predict that the core city will reach 40 per cent ethnic Chinese before
the turn of the Century which will make Vancouver the most Asian city in North America.
In Australia and New Zealand, the trends are not as startling but they point in the same direction. I do not have
the latest figures for Australia and New Zealand cities but from 1981 to 1986, over a short five-year period, the Asian population