The current global environment is profoundly marked by an economic crisis that started manifesting itself most startlingly with the collapse of the US Lehman Brothers bank in the Autumn of 2008, and that, at the time of writing, sill does not show any signs of abating. It is, therefore, a crisis which suggests a turning point, or a radical break, with the past. This book proposes to study the current economic global settings with reference to two meanings of the word crisis, and to analyse the extent to which the current crisis might lead to a (profound) transformation of the world (economic) system, and in particular of the Asian system.