Are we witnessing Asia's rise, and the West's inevitable decline? With the world's two most populous countries being in Asia, and an increasingly dynamic economy, it has long seemed obvious that this is the Asian Century, just as the last century was American. But this simplistic binary trope obscures the inherent complexity of the region and is essentially misleading, argues Bilahari Kausikan, a Singaporean diplomatic legend who will deliver this year's State of Asia Address.

On the eve of our flagship conference  STATE OF ASIA, we are hosting our second State of Asia Address with a leading thinker from the region. As is customary with the State of the Union in the U.S., this event will deliver a broad assessment on the key issues and challenges in Asia today and provide a view into the future of the region.

The State of Asia Address is hosted in collaboration with the University of Zurich at the prestigious Aula, where Winston Churchill gave his famous "Let Europe Arise" lecture in 1946. Prof. Dr. Michael Schaepman, President of the University of Zurich, will deliver welcome remarks.

This event is open to the public and free of charge. Registration is essential. Register here.

Bilahari Kausikan is former Ambassador and Permanent Secretary of Singapore. He has spent his entire career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During his 37 years in the Ministry, he served in a variety of appointments at home and abroad, including as Ambassador to the Russian Federation, Permanent Representative to the UN in New York, and as the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry. Among others, he is a Member of the Advisory Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He studied at Raffles Institution, the University of Singapore and Columbia University in New York.

Prof. Dr. sc. nat. Michael Schaepman (b. 1966) studied geography, experimental physics, and informatics at the University of Zurich and earned his doctoral degree at the Department of Geography of UZH in 1998. Following postdoctoral work at the University of Arizona in Tucson, USA, he returned to the UZH Department of Geography in 2000 to head up a research group. In 2003, Michael Schaepman was appointed professor of geographic information science at the Department of Environmental Sciences at Wageningen University (Netherlands), where as of 2005, he was academic head of the Center for Geoinformation. He has been professor of remote sensing at the Department of Geography (Remote Sensing Laboratories) at the University of Zurich since 2009.
His research priorities include Earth observation, remote sensing, and spectroscopy to measure biodiversity from space. Michael Schaepman was appointed Vice Dean and then Dean of the Faculty of Science in 2014 and 2016, respectively. From 2017 to 2020 he was the member of the Executive Board of the University responsible for the areas of research, innovation and academic career development. He has been President of the University of Zurich since 1 August 2020. (Picture: © Frank Bruederli)

This event is co-organized with the University of Zurich.