The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (APF Canada) has partnered with the Canadian International Council (CIC), Vancouver branch, to host a brownbag discussion with Dr. Stephen Nagy, Distinguished Fellow, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. The CIC is an independent, member-based council established in 1928 to strengthen Canada's role in global affairs.
ASEAN has been unseated as the primary driver of Asian integration. On the one hand, China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is integrating the region through geo-economic statecraft that, while providing a public good to some developing countries, aims to create more economic autonomy for China. On the other hand, China's growing economic, military, and deplomatic footprint in Asia has created new regional alignments - and resurrected others - that are contributing to a sea change in the emerging superpower's influence in the region.
What does this mean for Asian regionalism? Can ASEAN remain a key anchor in the regionalization process? And what alternatives are arising as countires in Asia re-calibrate their national interests to manage the pressures emanating from the escalating China-U.S. rivalry? This presentation will examine these questions by analyzing how China-U.S. relations are in fact driving the reconfiguration of Asian regionalism, and how socio-economic development and security concerns in particular are shifting the axis of Asian regionalism away from its ASEAN centre (if it ever was) toward competing visions of Asian regionalization.
By Invitation Only
