Where does power live?
Is it in war rooms and weapons stockpiles? In oil reserves and military alliances? In ivory towers and admissions offices?
Right now, as missiles fly and alliances fray, as the U.S. edges further into another war theater, we’re watching familiar players perform their old rituals – asserting dominance through force, sanctions, and posturing – trying to hold on to their misguided notion of power.
But what if power is migrating – not with the loud bang of bombs, but with a quiet, relentless building of talent, technology, infrastructure, and learning.
If you want to see where tomorrow’s power center lies, don’t look west.
Look for a small city in China.
Next time you glance at a world map, look for the city of Yuxi, tucked into China’s Yunnan province. And then draw a circle with a 2,500-mile radius around it. That is The Yuxi Circle – a circle that contains over half of humanity – India, China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, the Philippines, Pakistan, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, and others – inside it.
Over four billion people.
Four. Billion. Living. Learning. Building.
This isn’t a cartographic curiosity. It’s a tectonic tremor.
We’ve spent centuries drawing maps that put Europe and North America at the center. The West crowned itself the axis of intellect and culture – Oxford, Harvard, the Sorbonne – the temples of thought, the gatekeepers of genius.
But what if the center was never there at all?
What if, a thousand years before Harvard was a glint in anyone’s eye, scholars were already gathering in the lands within the Yuxi Circle? Thinking and teaching what gave the world the concept of zero, the civil service exam, the Silk Road, Confucian ethics, Buddhist pedagogy, and entire medical systems that predate Western science by centuries.
What if the West mistook the spotlight for the stage?
This isn’t a geopolitical question. It’s a gravitational truth.
The Yuxi Circle is not just a demographic anomaly. It’s the future of global education.
And it’s already begun.
The Return of the East
The story of this circle is a story of rebalancing – of intellectual history finally catching up with demographic reality. It’s not a rise of something new, it’s the return of an old legacy.
Colonization and Cold Wars might have shoved that legacy to the margins. But they didn’t erase it.
And now, the margins are moving.
This return isn’t just cultural either – it’s educational. And with it comes a challenge to the very value system global education has worshipped for too long.
Over the next decade, it won’t be shocking to see global innovation clusters anchored by Yuxi cities. To see Western universities sending students east for summer programs in ethical AI. To see Mandarin becoming the lingua franca of scientific discourse. To see the phrase “Global South” outdated as the term “dial-up”.
Because this isn’t just a population pull. It’s an education enlightenment.
Beyond Prestige: A New Value System
The Western model of global education has long mistaken prestige for progress – obsessing over rankings, test scores, and brand names. It’s been about who gets in, not what gets built. About moving bodies toward prestige, not moving ideas toward purpose.
But inside the Yuxi Circle, a different kind of story is unfolding:
- India is building public digital infrastructure to educate 100 million learners.
- China is investing in “digital Confucianism” – a tech-first model infused with moral scaffolding.
- Vietnam is producing STEM graduates at rates that rival G7 nations.
- Indonesia is innovating ed-fintech for last-mile learners.
These aren’t shadows of Harvard or Cambridge. These are intentional systems – designed for density, urgency, and youth.
While the West has been preoccupied with protecting prestige, the Yuxi Circle has been busy building purpose.
Infrastructure and Intentionality
While much of the West argues over enrollment caps, tenure battles, and performative DEI statements, the Yuxi Circle is quietly doing something far more radical: building.
- New campuses in tier-2 cities.
- Cross-border credential frameworks.
- Public-private research hubs.
- AI-driven platforms reaching rural learners.
This isn’t copycat innovation. It’s contextual excellence – solutions born from local challenges but designed for global relevance.
Because when four billion people share a purpose, you don’t teach for the elite.
You teach for the future.
East as Educator
What happens when Asia stops playing student and starts teaching the world?
We’re already seeing early signals:
- Korea’s K-content has become a form of global pedagogy.
- Japan’s ethics in robotics are setting global tech norms.
- China’s Belt and Road educational exchanges are exporting soft power not through loans – but through learning.
Soon, “Where did you go to college?” might be replaced by: “What did you build during your gap year in Guangzhou?”
Cultural Reversal
Soft power used to flow outward from the West. Now, it flows inward – from culture, content, and community.
K-dramas, Bollywood, C-dramas, Webtoons, anime, Southeast Asian influencers teaching calculus on TikTok.
The Yuxi Circle isn’t just exporting students anymore. It’s exporting taste, tone, and trust. And that matters – because education is never just about skills. It’s about worldview.
And the worldview emerging from this circle is more decentralized, more inclusive, and more emotionally fluent than many Western models still rooted in exclusivity.
The Indo-Yuxi Corridor
And don’t sleep on India either.
India’s demographic dividend, English fluency, startup ecosystem, and civilizational philosophy make it the hinge between the East and the Global South. It could very well lead to an “Indo-Yuxi Corridor” of shared ed-tech, credential mobility, and knowledge diplomacy.
This isn’t about nationalism. It’s about networked ambition.
Power, Rewritten
The currency of global power is shifting – from military might to human capital, from Western gatekeeping to Eastern building.
The next Cold War won’t be fought over land.
It’ll be fought over minds – and whose system can shape them faster, fairer, and at scale.
The future of global education is no longer westbound. It’s eastbound – and it’s already boarding. For centuries, the West exported missionaries and professors to “civilize” the East. Today, we send our students to learn.
This isn’t necessarily a sign of Western decline – it’s a recognition that power has more than one home. And it may very well be the Yuxi Circle. Because the Yuxi Circle isn’t just a passing headline – it’s the new front line. A test of whether we will cling to crumbling prestige, or engage with rising purpose.
Half the world is already inside it. The other half is waking up to its power. And the next revolution won’t be a war that’s televised. It’ll be global education that will be mapped, scaled, and shared.
And this time, the center holds.
Ex Cogitatione, Progressus.
Girish
