A new strategy for asymmetric synthesis, nameld asymmetric activation, is presented and some of its recent advances are reviewed.With asymmetric activation strategy, a chiral or even racemic catalyst may be selectively activated by a chiral activator to yield non-racemic prodlucts. The advantage of this approach over the deactivation strategy is that the activated catalyst can produce angreater enantiometric excess in the products than the enantiomerically pure catalyst can alone.

Key words: CATALYSIS, CHIRALITY, PROPENYL BENZENE