While all the world’s regions have made progress in reducing poverty and raising living standards, none have seen the rate of poverty reduction that has occurred in Asia since the end of the Second World War, and the Asian example has, as a result, come to pose a daunting intellectual challenge to Western liberal thought. Yet few Western thinkers or policy makers are prepared to acknowledge the extent of this challenge and even fewer have risen to meet the challenge. But the cold hard data alone on what has been achieved in raising living standards in Asia over the past several decades is, in and of itself, enough to pose serious questions about the hegemony of sorts enjoyed by Western thinkers in development debates since the Enlightenment and industrial revolution. This short paper seeks to explore the essence of that challenge.