This study of the Asia-Pacific region by Francois Godement, Professor of Contemporary Chinese History at the Paris-based National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisation, is certainly comprehensive.

It outlines the major economic and political forces that have shaped the region, while providing potted histories of China, Japan, North and South Korea, Vietnam, and the other East Asian tiger economies. The books listed in its bibliographies are unusually wide-ranging, relecting the author's French background. To its credit, it doesn't lay any claims to be anything other than a textbook, useful to first year students and journalists in a hurry.

A fine and cheery read, then: an international realignment is taking place; we - or at least our cousins - are winning.

What startles is the blurb on its back: "an essential tool for understanding the past, present and future of a region that has become a significant actor in the international political economy." Understanding the future? What a hope.

On 2 June 1989, a professor of political science from Beijing University, on a visit to Britain, addressed a crowded university lecture theatre. The theme was: Whither China? The third year international relations students sat forward; they were sitting their final paper on Chinese politics the next day.

The Chinese Professor spoke about the pro-democracy movement, the students pouring into Tiananmen Square, the certainty that Chinese Communism - and not the entrenched European form which the wily Gorbachev was looking after - would be overthrown and replaced by a benevolent form of Socialism.

The next day, as the students scribbled essays about China's rosy future, the Chinese army's crackdown on the pro-democracy supporters began; within a few days, it was being called a massacre. A conservative estimate is that 5,000 civilians were killed or injured that night. Hundreds of people were arrested.

Later that week, Solidarity, which had been a banned party until a few months' earlier, won elections in Poland. Then, in November, the Berlin wall was brought down. By the spring of 1990, the Soviet Communist Party had abolished its monopoly powers and sanctioned private property. In August 1991, the Soviet Communist Party itself was abolished.

Today, the free market runs riot in Russia. Meanwhile in China, the Communist Party's rule is as firm as ever. Dissidents face "re-education through labour".

The Chinese Professor's lecture comes to mind whenever I hear pronouncements thrown around about the future. Clearly, one day can be a long time in international politics.

Godement's study was first published, in French, in 1993. Renaissance, eh? Well, up to a point. Last year, Asian export growth suffered a dramatic slowdown which led some analysts to say that any talk of an Asian renaissance was simply hype. Others said it was a temporary blip: the giant was still awakening. In any case, any renaissance still seems premature. The tigers are still there, but they're cubs.

In the longer run, it's true that the West's power in relation to the Asian tiger economies, particularly in relation to Japan and China, is declining. But any decline is a relative one. In any meaningful way, its rule will continue for many years to come.

Beyond that, as its economic and demographic dynamism fades, the West may find that it will no longer be able to impose its rule on others. Without power, its cultural impetus, the universalisation of its values will end.

For now, I'll keep clear of the hype.

And the Chinese Professor? If he was lucky, he's on the US lecture theatre circuit, no doubt telling his students that the next century will be an Asian one. Otherwise, he's languishing in a prison. Or wondering how to escape from Hong Kong before the summer and its takeover by the People's Republic of China.