Global Asia - September 2023

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ASIA-PACIFIC OR INDO-PACIFIC? What’s in a name? For countries in Asia, that change in nomenclature encapsulates the complex dynamics that are reshaping geopolitics in the region as China and the United States increasingly square off over everything from national security to trade. The US and some of its allies hail the era of a “free and open” Indo-Pacific as something embedded with norms and values that distinguish it from the more inclusive concept of the Asia-Pacific, which has been in use for years. If shades of a coalition of the like-minded comes to mind, that’s probably no accident. But for countries in Asia that fear being coerced to side with one or other of the great powers, that is a problem. It is also an opportunity.
Enter the middle powers. In this cover package of Global Asia, we feature a series of articles that emerged from a workshop held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia July 11-13, “Middle Power Agency in an Indo-Pacific Era.” In their introductory essay, Paul Evans and Cheng-Chwee Kuik note that the terms Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific “symbolize substantially different conceptions of the ambitions and structure of a regional order. But it is not as if the Asia-Pacific flag is being symbolically lowered across the region and the Indo-Pacific one hoisted to replace it, though in some places and situations that is happening.” The essays in this cover package reveal the enormous range of thought that is being devoted to these changes and how middle powers can exercise their agency in the face of these shifts in the global order.

Global Asia Magazine Description:

Global Asia is a quarterly publication of the East Asia Foundation. The foundation, established in Seoul in January 2005, strives to promote peace, prosperity, security and sustainability in East Asia by creating an open and creative forum for the exchange of ideas on regional co-operation and integration, among other goals.
The mission we have set for ourselves with Global Asia is both bold and urgent: It is to provide a compelling, serious, and responsible forum for distinguished thinkers, policymakers, political leaders and business people to debate the most important issues in Asia today.
Global Asia is not a journal with a fixed point of view, or a particular agenda. Our aim is to give voice to the global dimension of what is happening in Asia. In our pages and on our web site, we aim for Asia to speak to the world, and the world to Asia. That is important at a time when this region is playing an ever greater role in world affairs.
There are other fine publications on international affairs. What sets us apart is our focus: Asia. We believe that the world is moving into “the Age of Asia,” to borrow a phrase from one of the articles in the inaugural issue of Global Asia in September 2006. This transformation is not going to occur overnight, but it has already begun.
The region’s dynamic economic growth, stable and accountable political systems, maturing democracies, and evolving sense of community are giving Asia greater weight in the world. These developments will have enormous implications for governments, businesses, societies and individuals across the globe. How that transformation is viewed, and shaped, from within Asia and how it is perceived outside Asia is an essential part of the story we have to tell.
The forces of globalization are having a profound impact throughout the world. And they are being influenced and channeled in different ways in different parts of the world. Ours is the story of Asia’s experience with globalization, and the ideas and debates influencing it. In pursuing our mission, we aim to play a part, however modest, in helping to shape the future of Asia.