William Bratton is author of "China's Rise, Asia's Decline." He was previously head of equity research, Asia-Pacific, at HSBC.
One of the challenges when considering Asia's near-term outlook is that the trends shaping its economic, financial and political future are multi-decade affairs. They roll remorselessly forward irrespective of the constraints of the Gregorian calendar, and it is often misleading to assume that the trends over the next 12 months will be materially different from those that typified the years recently passed.
