What India’s epics and China’s classical thinkers can teach global CEOs about power, competition, and legacy.
Asia is not rising. It is returning.
It is common to remark upon the economic and geopolitical rise of Asia. For me, however, it is a return to the historical norm that was interrupted by the force multiplier of the Industrial Revolution in the West.
In 1700, by Angus Maddison’s estimates, the Indian subcontinent produced close to a quarter of the world’s output. By 1820, China was the largest economy on earth. At their own pace, India and China are closing the gap with the West and, given their demographic heft, are resuming their leading positions. The IMF’s latest outlook projects India to grow around 7% this year and to overtake Japan as the world’s fourth-largest economy in 2027, with China already second.
My recent travels across India took me through New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Visakhapatnam and Kolkata. Their ambition did not surprise me, because every visitor expects it. What struck me was how easily founders move from a pitch deck to a reference that is two thousand years old. Strategy here has memory. This is something that Western boardrooms keep missing: they study Asia’s supply chains, consumers and regulators, but rarely how Asia thinks about power. Yet Asia’s business future cannot be read by those who ignore its strategic past.
India: Power Must Be Deserved
The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are not management manuals, and treating them as such does them a disservice. But they ask the questions every board eventually faces.
Ravana is no fool. He is learned, wealthy and formidable. When his own brother Vibhishana urges him to return Sita and avoid ruin, Ravana drives him out, and Vibhishana crosses over to Rama’s camp. Any CEO should recognize the scene: the leader exiles the one person telling him the truth, and the truth walks over to the competition. Talent builds empires, but character decides whether they last.
The Mahabharata is darker, and more modern. A family feud over succession escalates into a war that destroys almost everyone. Before the battle, Arjuna freezes because he sees clearly that every option carries a moral cost, and the Bhagavad Gita is the conversation that follows. Restructurings, successions and market exits in a fracturing geopolitical landscape are Arjuna moments. Execution will not solve them; only judgment will.
India’s inheritance is hard-headed as well. Kautilya’s Arthashastra is one of the most clinical texts on statecraft ever written, with long sections on intelligence, the treasury and alliances. Its mandala doctrine holds that your neighbor is your natural rival and your neighbor’s neighbor is your natural ally. Any executive mapping competitors and partners across a region is channeling Kautilya, whether they know it or not.
China: Power Must Be Used Intelligently
Sun Tzu is the most quoted and least read strategist in business. Strip away the slogans and his core idea is winning at the lowest possible cost: the best victory is won without a battle, or at least without bleeding. You may call it “economy of force.” A market-share war that destroys margins is not a win, and an acquisition that hollows out the acquirer is not growth. Entering a market without understanding its institutions is not boldness, but rather an example of poor homework.
But China offers a debate, not a doctrine. Confucius rooted authority in virtue and example, Laozi warned against forcing outcomes, and Han Feizi trusted rules, incentives and control over personal goodness. Should a leader rely on virtue or on institutions, on relationships or on rules, on intervention or on restraint? Every board that has argued culture versus compliance has replayed a debate that predates the Roman Empire.
More Similar Than We Think, More Different Than We Assume
The lazy version says India stands for duty and China for calculation. It falls apart on contact, because India produced Kautilya, the realist, and China produced Confucius, the moralist. The real difference is one of emphasis. The Mahabharata is unmatched on the moral cost of conflict, and Sun Tzu is unmatched on its material cost.
Together they give me the two questions I put to any CEO before a major fight. Is this battle worth fighting? And what will victory cost us? The first protects purpose and the second protects resources. Skip either one and you win the wrong war.
Family Business: Where Strategy Meets Generations
These traditions bite hardest in business families, which carry enormous weight in private enterprise in both India and China. At its core, the Mahabharata is a failed succession, with an unresolved rivalry, divided loyalties and elders who stayed silent too long. Confucian thought treats continuity as an obligation across generations. Kautilya reminds every family that good intentions are no substitute for institutional capacity.
My rule with founders is simple. Family loyalty is an asset and never a substitute for governance. Tradition gives confidence, but it must not become an alibi for inertia. The first generation builds wealth, and the next must build endurance. Ultimately, a founder’s final great achievement is a company that no longer needs the founder.
The test gets harder when Asian family groups go global. When Tata Motors bought Jaguar Land Rover from Ford in 2008 for $2.3 billion in cash, skeptics expected an Indian conglomerate to impose itself on a British icon. Tata promised that both brands would keep their distinctive identities, and it kept that promise by investing patiently and letting each brand’s character travel. That is internationalization done properly: remaining yourself while becoming comfortable in someone else’s world. The lesson applies well beyond Mumbai. Central and Eastern Europe too has its own national champions and hidden champions, and they need to internationalize before others decide their place in the value chain.
The Missing Competitive Edge: Civilizational Intelligence
Western executives have spent decades measuring Asia. That work is necessary but no longer sufficient. The next advantage is what I call civilizational intelligence: understanding where capital moves, and also how history, memory and intellectual tradition shape trust, authority and time horizons.
This is no license for stereotypes. An Indian entrepreneur does not think like Kautilya, and a Chinese executive does not run on Sun Tzu. Each country contains dozens of business cultures. But ignoring cultural history is just as naive. With family groups, sovereign funds and state-linked institutions above all, a relationship carries meanings no financial model captures.
It works both ways. Indian and Chinese companies entering Europe and the Americas must read Western expectations on governance, regulation and political accountability just as carefully. Working between the European Union, the Black Sea region and Asia, I see deals fail far more often on misread signals than on misread spreadsheets.
Market access opens doors, but cultural intelligence keeps them open. In an age of tariffs, sanctions and supply-chain politics, that is not a soft skill – it is risk management; and risk management is the core of what I call businesscraft. Governments can help by planning economic diplomacy and company strategy together.
The AI Century Still Needs Human Wisdom
AI will make every CEO faster and better informed. It will not make anyone wiser. It can price a factory closure but cannot carry responsibility for the workers. It can model an acquisition but cannot tell you whether the merged company will deserve its people’s trust. It can optimize a competitive campaign but cannot decide whether the victory is worth having.
This is where the epics and the classics meet. Power needs legitimacy, strategy needs intelligence, institutions need discipline and leadership needs restraint. Technology can strengthen each of them, but it cannot carry any of them for you. The risk is that leaders mistake more intelligence for more wisdom long before machines become too intelligent.
An Intellectual Opportunity, Not Only an Economic One
The Asian Century will be measured in GDP, trade and technology. It should also be measured in ideas. Western executives need more curiosity and less complacency. Asian companies going global need confidence in their heritage, matched by a precise reading of the markets they enter. Every CEO, wherever they come from, needs character and judgment, and the ability to think past the next victory.
The future of global business will not belong to those who accumulate the most power. It will belong to those who understand power well enough to use it wisely.
Written by Radu Magdin.
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