Pacific Narratives

Experts believe that the Indo-Pacific has also given a direct recognition of the growing importance of India whose emergence as a strong economic power and leading security actor in ways reflected in the old facets of the region. To recollect history, the geographical space referred to as Asia-Pacific revolved primarily around two civilizations, India and China. The colonial system led to the end of Indian and Chinese influence over their neighbours and to a fragmentation of the region

- H KHASNOBIS The writer is a former central civil service officer who retired from the Ministry of Defence

The Asia-Pacific (APAC) is the geographical region of the world adjoining the western Pacific Ocean. It includes countries from East Asia to Southern Asia and Oceania. Its geographical spread is humongous. The Asia-Pacific region is home to 60 per cent of the world population – some 4.5 billion – and includes the world's most populous countries, China and India.

APAC has a rich diversity of both socio-economic, natural environmental and abundant natural resources including tropical rain forests and marine products. The term became popular since the late 1980s in commerce, finance and economic cooperation because the nations within APAC were gradually emerging as important markets despite the heterogeneity of the region's economies.

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) provides a good example of a realistic perspective on the Asia-Pacific. It unambiguously identifies five major sub-regions of 51 countries making up the geographical region. They are (1) East and North East Asia (ENEA); (2) North and Central Asia (NCA); (3) South and South-West Asia (SSWA); (4) South East Asia (SEA/ASEAN) and (5) the Pacific.

The Asia-Pacific is largely an administrative construction of the region that complements other regional groupings within the United Nations (UN) system. Such groupings, for example, are used to report progress on the UN's Sustainable Development Goals even though the information provided remains limited.

The countries under the Asia-Pacific region are of vastly different geographical sizes, populations, diverse regional demography, stages of development, cultures, political orientation and language. Sometimes, the region's precise boundaries vary depending on the context. For example, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) includes five countries, Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru and the US, apart from 16 Pacific Rim member countries of the Asia-Pacific that adjoin the Pacific Ocean.