Episode 6: Economy and Global Conflict: Where is Asia Headed?

Recent political and economic upheavals have profoundly changed the world order. The relevance of veteran post-war institutions such as the UN are being questioned. New alliances are emerging as countries, especially those in the global south, are working towards securing their own interests.

In this episode, Taimur Baig, Managing Director and Chief Economist at DBS Bank; foreign policy analyst C. Raja Mohan; Managing Director of the Asia Society Policy Institute Rorry Daniels; Director of Education at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies in Sri Lanka Bhagya Senaratne; and Director of South Asia Initiatives at the Asia Society Policy Institute Farwa Amer discuss these global challenges and Asia’s position in the changing state of affairs.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:04

We talk about the post-Second World War era characterized by idealism and we sort of lament the fading of that idealism. But let's also be clear that the post-World War era was driven by a very bipolar dynamic where it was the US hegemonic influence on global rules that overtook global development, say over the last 60, 70 years. So the Americans told us that free and open markets are a good thing, and we subscribe to that. They told us that capital flow movement adds to the efficiency and prosperity of the global economy, and we bought it. Now, while we have sort of you know held on to those cherished values, the Americans themselves are saying it doesn't quite work for us. And therefore the entire edifice, which was sort of underwritten by US hegemonic infrastructure, itself is being pulled out. So then what do we have left?

SPEAKER_06 1:00

Welcome to Reorient. I'm Garov Gupta, global managing partner of Dalberg.

SPEAKER_07 1:04

And I'm an Akshi Soktiet, CEO of HR Society India. It's been quite the year, Garov. Two wars reshaping regions in real time, new tariff walls going up just as fast as old alliances crack, and countries, both big and small, scrambling to redraw their place on the global map. I feel like we're watching the world churn in slow motion and fast forward at the same time. I think the big question hanging over all of this is where does Asia fit in this shifting story and where does it go next? But before we bring in our guests, I wanted us to pause for our younger listeners or anyone who looks at geopolitics and thinks, wait, what exactly are we talking about? I mean, Gorov, you're going to be diving into poles of influence today. It sounds abstract, but it shapes everything from trade floors to tech wars. Let's break down what that actually means.

SPEAKER_06 1:58

Well, and actually, you are asking me to dig into 30-year-old international relations from my college days, but I'll try my best. You know, polarity refers to a power center. And by power center, we mean countries with power centers. So for much of the 20th century, the US and Russia were poles of power. In a multipolar world, you have the US, Europe, India, and China. Another concept we'll be discussing is around international institutions. And, you know, post-World War II, there was an enormous rise in these international institutions such as the UN, the WHO, a lot of global financial institutions that came about with this sense of we need to prevent wars, we need to increase global stability. And that is going to be a big part of the discussion we will have to say, well, will those institutions last into what is now happening in the 21st century? And do we need to think about new institutions?

SPEAKER_07 2:52

Well, I'm really keen to know what these new set of relevant far structures are going to be. And we have quite the cast of characters to help us make sense of it all. There's Temur Beg, chief economist at DBS, C. Raja Mohan, columnist and foreign policy analyst, Rory Daniels and Farva Amer from the Asia Society Policy Institute, and Bhagya Senaratne of the Bandar Naike Center for International Studies. They each bring a lens that sharpens this moment in a different way.

SPEAKER_06 3:34

And you've talked about TOTUS, which stands for, you know, this trade outside of the US, which I think is a great term. And there's a really a lot of, I think, hope in there as well that you've injected. I guess one question does that feel like something that can simply happen if we continue to rely on the existing institutions of trade and those that support trade? Is this a moment in which we actually also need new institutions if we are going to be less reliant on simply the unipolar US world of trade?

SPEAKER_05 4:10

It seems to me increasingly that we need new platforms, the usefulness of the existing multilateral framework that we have had, the IMF for balance of payment support around the world, the World Bank for Development Purposes, the WTO to set the rules of trade, and an assortment of UN organizations to carry out rules of trade and commerce and movement of people enshrining the international civil rights, if you will. I think they are all facing terminal decline. We talk about the post-Second World War era characterized by idealism, and we sort of lament the fading of that idealism. But let's also be clear that the post-World War era was driven by a very bipolar dynamic where it was the US hegemonic influence on global rules that overtook global development, say over the last 60, 70 years. So the Americans told us that free will and open markets are a good thing and we subscribe to that. They told us that capital flow movement adds to the efficiency and prosperity of the global economy, and we bought it. Now, while we have sort of held on to those cherished values, the Americans themselves are saying it doesn't quite work for us. And therefore, the entire edifice, which was sort of underwritten by US hegemonic infrastructure, itself is being pulled out. So then what do we have left? Certain beliefs that we imbibe from the US, but we want to hold on to, although the US doesn't. So do we really believe in these things or not? So that's a pretty profound question to ask. Because if the US doesn't believe it anymore and the US is very consequential, do we then just join the US zeitgeist? Or do we say that there was independent secular wisdom to that globalized view or vision of the world? And even if the Americans have fallen out of love with it, doesn't mean that we should, even if we had subscribed to those ideas under the aegis of the US hegemonic infrastructure. So I think that is a question that many countries, many societies are asking. There are winners and losers of globalization. Countries that have won largely on a net basis probably want to hold on to that. And even the total dynamic that we talk about, that whether it's tech or trade or talent outside the United States, can we form a group of like-minded countries? Probably will not be everybody in the world, but probably those countries that have on a net basis won out of globalization would want to maintain some degree of that old infrastructure of converging towards open trade and commerce. There might be others, including the United States, who probably will say we don't really want it anymore. We want to have a more nativist, inward-looking population, and we want to cater to their tastes and preferences. And the AI revolution and the tech revolution and the automation of manufacturing might actually enable that dynamic where countries can afford to be more inward-looking than they could in the past. It's quite possible. But that is not the world that I live in. I hope that is not the world that you live in, but there will be some who live in that world. And for them, there'll be different sets of rules. I think that's the way we're going to go.

SPEAKER_06 7:14

I wonder if we divide up what you said into two parts, because I think in some ways there is the US version of the economy and there's the US version of governance. And I think what has happened to some extent is though, you know, we're still in a world in which this idea that the way the US governs itself and the idea of being a beacon of democracy, that seems to be not an experiment that has necessarily taken hold everywhere or as fast as people are expecting. But if you take the other side of it, the idea of free markets and of capitalism, I mean, you have a China that is still a communist party that, as far as its economic system is concerned, is very much a free market capitalist society in many respects, more so than I think people give it credit for. And so to your point of where are we today, I could imagine that the what the US has been a proponent of in terms of the economic side of things has taken hold. And yes, they will be reversing gear, but it does feel like, you know, India, China, two very large, fast-growing economies, Europe, I think almost a third party here in terms of thinking about where it goes. That feels like it's moving ahead. I would argue that is it is it more that the governance side of things, the political side of things, is where we we're in for a space where now anything goes because there isn't some single unipolar world in which trying to pull everyone towards a sort of democratic medium.

SPEAKER_05 8:34

Right. I suppose this story sort of starts with China and probably even ends with China, that over the last two decades, particularly in the US, there has been this feeling that this experimentation of globalization has gone too far and it has created certain benefits for China almost on a net zero-sum basis, that those benefits have accrued to China at the expense of US blue-collar jobs. Now, before I go deeper into that question, I should underwrite this important point. This is not an across-the-board US view. This is a view that resides in Washington, D.C. And in to some extent the heartland of the United States. Coastal America, Financial America, Te America, there are lots and lots of people, influential otherwise, who do not subscribe to this view. But there is certainly a critical mass of them, and they run the US to sort of speak these days, who do believe that there has been a zero-sum narrative, and therefore the rules of the game that the US proposed and enforced have to be rewritten because it doesn't really work for the US. Now, you're right that whether we look at China or India or Europe, there's still a significant amount of inertia toward globalization, the perspective of trade in goods, but also increasing in trade in services, and to some extent, flows of capital. Flows of people, I think, you know, we need to put that aside because I think nobody in the world is enthusiastically supporting flows of people any longer. It's not a good thing, but that's the world we live in. But in terms of trade in goods and services and flows of capital, yes, I do think that between the non-US large blocks, there is a degree of symbiosis and mutual benefits that is likely to accrue and that will continue. I also think that this dynamic is not a super strong dynamic. It could be challenged by, again, China, that if China becomes hypercompetitive and enjoys a large amount of advantages on technology and manufacturing processes, they may be able to extract US-like leverage on their counterparts. And that could then make those counterparts also start thinking like the US. That risk is still there.

SPEAKER_06 10:45

Our next guests are foreign policy analysts, C. Roger Mohan and Rory Daniels. And I asked them a similar question about the changing polarities in the world and how they see this turbulence playing out.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

I think all the key features of the post-1945 order that we had assumed, uh, that the US, which had actually built this order, is trying to reverse that direction. So I think the rest of the world, I think uh we're all have to cope with this fundamental change that is taking place in the US. Because if the international institutions, if international economy and if uh international politics doesn't work for the US, which is the number one power and which is actually its lead on the rest of the powers is growing, then I think we are in for some rough ride.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

From my perspective, I think that we are seeing a much slower realignment of US foreign policy than it might seem from the headlines of the last six to eight weeks. I think what you described is correct. And I would trace this all the way back to the early 2000s, honestly. I think that the global order started to change when the US pursued an interventionalist policy in the Middle East that saw us, you know, attack and depose a sitting sovereign leader for reasons that were never proven out, that there were weapons of mass destruction, there were eminent threats to the United States, our allies and partners. And in the end, that wasn't, that did not end up being true. So I think actually this is a much slower, longer trend of the US being very dissatisfied with the international system and starting to undermine the order from within. And that was really probably the only thing that could fundamentally redirect the international order was that the US, as Raja mentioned, the guarantor of the system, the country that embedded its power in a system of rules and institutions in order to bring the rest of the world along with it. When the US started acting outside of that order, it slowly eroded the order from within. And then the pressures on that order have been building and shifting throughout successive elections in the United States. So you will see that there remains support in the US for a robust US-led international system. But as the reality of the US acting outside of that system and the consequences of that are playing out over the last several decades, the support for that order is starting to erode. And it's not just about the politics, the conflicts, et cetera. It is also, as Raja mentioned, about the economics of the system, the process of globalization, how it was handled inside the US domestic economy. And an increasing sense, I think, in the United States, that we live in a world of scarcity of resources, that if some other country gains, it has to come at America's expense. And that is a very, very difficult ideology and mindset to move because it's faked in in some ways to the system of democratic capitalism that has spread throughout the world.

SPEAKER_06 13:59

If you're emerging from World War I, according to him, well, that just leads to World War II. Uh, if you're emerging from World War II, that actually leads to new institutions being built. Many of the institutions that we've come to rely on up till now. But those institutions are now at risk. And so the question is are we just at the start of ongoing conflict? Or are we in a moment of emerging from World War II where we might actually start to think about the new institutions that now need to be built for the world of the future? Bhagya Senaratna has written about regional groupings that are assuming greater significance in this new world order. And so I was curious about her thoughts on this theory. I guess my first question to you is are we in World War I? Are we in World War II? Or do you think this is just a rubbish comparison?

SPEAKER_04 14:50

That's a really interesting way of putting things. And I believe I would be in the second camp coming out of World War II. And I've written about this recently, and I've been trying to put together a longer article about this girl. So why I say World War II or in the camp where World War II is, because institutions, like you mentioned, were created around the Second World War to prevent future wars from coming, to ensure world peace and security. But we see these institutions no longer seem to be relevant, or that those countries, for example, the United States, that created these institutions, don't want to adhere to them or you know, abide by these institutions, or rely on these institutions for their own peace and security or to ensure world peace and security for that matter. So it seems like we are in a stage where we are coming out of the Second World War, where even countries, smaller countries, the global south as an actor is playing a huge role in changing institution, institution building, changing the norms within the international society. I feel India and China will take a lead, right? Especially China, because it's been doing its homework, it's been doing a lot of work on building an alternate voice, so to say. It's been doing its own development financing, it's been coming out with political different structures, it's been regrouping countries. And yes, BRICS can be a fine good way to go about rethinking IR, rethinking how we practice international relations and even restructuring the international system as it is, right? They've also got the new development bank. There's also the AIIB, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank that's there. So there are these structures that have come up that us almost challenging the norm, this challenging the existing organizations, challenging a bit of the existing international system.

SPEAKER_06 16:50

I read your article about we were really at the zenith of what was emerging in terms of America pulling back from more traditional norms and rules. And I think you said at the time that like what has happened in the past, this is another sort of vacuum creation that China will fill. I'm kind of curious about, I buy your argument about, well, there's competition, competition's good. At the same time, it's not that, you know, it's a perfect market. You know, China is your neighbor, and in Sri Lanka, this is a very live conversation about the Indian Ocean. And at the same time, it is itself a weakened player that yes, there's a vacuum to be filled, but its economy is in strife and it's facing its own pressures, especially around trade. So, what's your sense of the sort of role that China is going to be playing in the region? Do you see it really playing a bigger role because America is ceding ground? Or do you think it is actually recognizing that it cannot play the role of the this other polar opposite to the US?

SPEAKER_04 17:54

So I'm gonna tackle it in several different ways. Yes, I mentioned that there is a vacuum being created, and it's not the first time, right? The US has been pulling out and coming in, of course, due to their own national interest and their interests around the world. But I also think, yes, China would be interested, but I think it'll be slow to it'll pan out its interests and pan out its activities, right? Because the Chinese don't want to show their power or should don't want to show their capabilities just yet because they have their timeline, then they're working towards that timeline. And in time, I think they will slowly show what their capabilities are, what they really want to do. And you're correct, the economy is not doing well. However, the example I used of China is just one, but I also feel as time progresses, especially in Sri Lanka, India would also play a huge part. It's been doing that since the 2022 crisis, it's been doing a lot of work in Sri Lanka. And it's almost as if the vacuum that China created is being filled by India. So this concept of the vacuum is again dynamic out of. It's not static. It's not just about the US creating vacuums, but it's about vacuums that any power could create and who identifies it, which state identifies it, and how are they then going to fill that vacuum, right? So it's a dynamic vacuum that I'm talking about. But the example in that article that I gave was of China because that's something I could relate to because I had written about it before. But I also think India did a very good way, was very good in filling a vacuum that was created in 22 with the economic crisis. And they've done really well in entering Sri Lanka and kind of finding, you know, roots in the country. And you see that even with the present government, right? When China for about a decade was doing very well with the Rajapaksha regime, here we see India has come in with a very different government playing its part with the Disanaika government. So I think this concept of the vacuum, we need to identify or understand that it can change. And yes, China will want to continue to play a huge role going forward, but India is also another emerging power that wants to uh you know spread its tentacles. So I think India will also use the spaces that are you know emptied by others?

SPEAKER_06 20:21

The relationship between India and China is in the spotlight amidst this global churn. And the two neighbors have historically had a difficult relationship marked by periods of conflict and uneasy calm. But as I asked Daimur, could the current political and economic volatility create opportunities for two countries to kind of come together? Is there a grand bargain between India and China? China is keen to grow its export markets at this moment. India has one of the largest growing consumer bases, but at the same time, India needs to be energy independent, needs to have its own manufacturing to drive jobs. Is there some sort of interesting grand bargain between these two countries? And maybe that grand bargain has already started.

SPEAKER_05 21:02

Again, I don't see in the speeches or visions transmitted by Indian Foreign Policy Circle or Chinese foreign policy circle that suggest that there's a grand bargain in the making. But at the micro level, to your point, Garov, I see increasing evidence of things getting worked out in a very pragmatic manner. A year ago, when India-China relationship was not particularly comfortable at all, I wouldn't say they're great today, but there were certainly many areas of tremendous amount of tension a year ago. Even then, I, on my day-to-day business, felt that there was a thaw taking place between India and China. Engineers from large Chinese tech companies used to complain bitterly in 2023 that they couldn't get visas to go to India, although they had smartphone assembly plants or other missionary assembly plants in India. They had FDI, but they couldn't get their engineers there. By middle of 2024, those complaints stopped entirely and they were going there unimpeded. When I see the Roads of India featuring MG cars, which is in my view, is a model case of 50-50 ownership, joint venture, tech transfer with Shanghai Auto and GSW in India. I see a model of India-China symbiosis taking shape. It is not where China comes and floods Indian markets, which has always been India's fear, but China comes with critical technology that India wants to buy, and India has a means to buy the technology, but with equity participation. It's not an MNC coming and selling stuff and just taking the profit back. Indians' profit, the Chinese profit, market access, tech transfer. That model, I think, is working out pretty well. 2025, in my view, is like a watershed year in that respect, and it'll build more and more going forward.

SPEAKER_06 22:42

What is your view on ASEAN, BRICS, APEC, all these different sort of regional multilateral groups? Are they themselves part of the anachronism of the past and now need to be thought of differently? Or in fact, are these now the future?

SPEAKER_05 22:57

So I'm going to separate the discussion into trade in goods and trade in services. And I think it's an important one. I think a distinction that is completely lost on Donald Trump for some reason. So on trade in goods, we are beginning to see some degree of commoditization or homogenization of trade, where washing machine made in Thailand versus Mexico or China, they're all the same. And the technology is becoming so ubiquitous as they can be made in various corners in India. No major change in value addition, no major change in productivity. I think that is the future that machineries and tools will become more and more automated, more and more commoditized. And the idea that I have cheap labor, therefore my manufactured goods are cheaper than your manufactured goods, I think that distinction will dissipate in the very near term. I'm not even talking about a 20-year future. I'm talking about a five, 10-year future. Robotics plants in China, they can set up another plant in Bangkok or Bangalore in six months' notice with very little problem. So the criticality of the supply chain, the regional symbiosis. So, like, you know, we take a lot of pride in ASEAN that products, just like in the US, you know, one finished product crosses state lines 10, 20 times. In Southeast Asia, one finished product crosses countries in ASEAN many, many times. Maybe that is a great thing to have for the time being because the rest of the world is not as open as ASEAN, with restrictive movement of goods and inputs, but that advantage will narrow. And therefore, countries that have benefited from these sort of supply chain amalgamation would have to rethink their own domestic priorities and how much of manufacturing-led growth they can rely upon going forward. That takes us to the world of services, where again, tech is changing the way services are traded, services are provided, and services are prepared. And technical know-how that used to reside in certain areas of excellence can jump borders very quickly because of the borderless aspect of services delivery. And that I think is going to be very powerful going forward. I think in the area where India has tremendous advantage. But also there is an element of symbiosis with China. Chinese tech, Indian know-how, Indian entrepreneurship, Chinese business acumen, everything come together. And same with Southeast Asia. As Southeast Asia re-examines its anchoring of manufacturing as the driver of growth, as a key engine of growth, it will also start looking at tech enabled services as a major driver of growth going forward. So some things that used to be a part of the process of becoming or transitioning from middle income to high income in the past would become ubiquitous aspects of countries that are at the lower end of the income spectrum, middle end of this income spectrum, not just the top end. As in leapfrogging from manufacturing to services, we will all do it almost simultaneously because of the democratic nature of the new tech trends.

SPEAKER_06 25:37

And I want to push that a little bit further because as you rightly say, sometimes it's lost on people that actually trade, you know, if you put services there, that's actually a big part of the trade, for example, that India has with the US.

SPEAKER_05 25:47

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 25:48

But you also mentioned earlier that we're in a world that will continuously become harder for the movement of people. So yes, services as we traditionally understand them, you know, selling software and so forth, yes, you can do that digitally. But in an aging society, which is effectively everyone now, right? Isn't there almost a third wave of services, which is literally physical services of people that if you start to think about what places like Japan, increasingly China will need as well, they will need to allow young people to move in, perhaps even from Africa, not if we're not even talking about Asia, Africa is going to become over the next few decades really the growth engine of young labor. We're already trying to deal with some of those challenges for the next five, 10 years around the global system. But to me, I could almost see in 10 years' time this incredible pressure on immigration, where we have a mindset that is maybe more closed, but an economic reality that requires us to actually open up borders and we just are not prepared for it. What do you say to that as a hypothesis?

SPEAKER_05 26:49

That's a really critical question. I think the flippant answer to this is oh, we're gonna have such amazing robots that they can take care of people in the nursing homes going forward. I'll tell you why that's just not gonna work out. Because the elderlies, even 30 years from now, will be people who were born in the 70s and 80s. That group is not gonna be happy with robots coming to clean them or bathe them or talk to them. So the need for human touch and human-centric elderly care would be around for 30, 40 years. Okay, kids who are born in the 90s and 2000s, maybe 50 years from now, would not care, but we don't have to worry about that issue. We need to worry about the world in the next 20, 30 years. And there, the point that you make that the rapidly growing aging population in a lot of wealthy corners of the world would probably have to embrace immigration for elderly care. That is simply not going to change. And if that doesn't happen, the elderly themselves will start moving. So you think about Southeast Asia. Thailand is modeling itself into a retirement destination because they have plenty of people and good sort of culture of service and good health care. And you have Europeans sort of, you know, giving up their lives entirely, just you know, shutting things down in Europe and moving to Thailand on a permanent basis, relying on their digital nomad visas and so on. I think that dynamic is going to be powerful. I think it's a huge growth industry from elderly care. Look, I live in Singapore. We had the latest census come out earlier this week. More than 20% of the population in the Singapore is already over 65. And this will be 24 by the end of this decade. In 2030, one in every four Singaporeans will be over 65. It's a profound shift and it'll change the societal ethos, the demand of the voting population will change fundamentally. And I think there's a lot of times, you know, there is the young workers who see foreigners as competition for their jobs. The retired folk have a very different imperative and they'll want very different things. And we're heading into that world for sure. And I do think that elderly care-related immigration is going to be a very powerful driver of movement of people. It's not all doom and bloom. I think that's a bright spot.

SPEAKER_06 28:55

Yeah, it's a bright spot, but I think the politics for getting there may be one that is not so bright. Like I think that's this is where you'll get some pretty strong action reaction.

SPEAKER_05 29:06

Absolutely. I traveled through North Asia just last week. See, in Japan, it's clear that there's only so far they can go, given their value system in terms of embracing foreigners in elderly care. And if they don't do it, they'll just be resigned to the you know slow grinding decline in population and aging and emptying towns. Korea, I was there subsequently, seemed to be a little more pragmatic on that. On agriculture in particular, they're embracing foreign labor. Probably they'll do so in elderly care as well. China is just so big. There's no amount of immigration that can solve it, and they don't have that concept at all. So they will have to deal with aging in a very different way.

SPEAKER_06 29:42

Yeah, I think you know, being open to foreigners is not a tap you can turn on. That's right. I have two more questions. I mean, one I think just you've spoken about this idea of TOTIS, but you've also spoken about the idea that given the decline of the US, it's not surprising that there has been this reaction that tariffs have been put up, there's been that, you know, that sense of protectionism. And I know we talk at a very macroeconomic level of this is a bad thing and so forth. I wanted to also just ask you about its effectiveness more from the perspective of how do businesses really cope with this. And I'm gonna share one story. I was in New York last week and I met up with a friend of mine, he's a jeweler, and I was you know very concerned for him. He's a jeweler in India. That's one of the industries people keep speaking about. They're like, oh my God, these 50% tariffs, you know, boom, this that industry is gonna take a huge hit. And I asked him how he's going in it because he was very panicked at the start of the year. He says, I think we're gonna make more money this year than last year. And by the way, I think our tariffs are actually gonna be lower than they ever have been. And I was like, What do you this is just what have you done? Did you have a private deal? And it is that once you actually work through the system, which is a very blunt instrument, right? Like a government saying, here's some tariffs, he is able to set up a deal with a manufacturer in the US that does one sort of small amount of finishing. And that actually makes it a made-in-US product, which he has never tried to do.

SPEAKER_05 31:00

Okay. You are describing, I mean, this is the essence of the uselessness of protectionism. Because when you look at the laws that are going to govern all this tariff, the amount of horse trading that companies make, amount of loopholes that from accountants to engineers to logistics people can figure out, they will run circles and they'll create all sorts of obscure ways of circumventing tariff. Or if they can, they'll give rent to somebody and then they will enrich and they will look the other way when they go about their business. This is the core reason why the profession of economics, the profession of finance have always been supportive of simpler, cleaner policies of single tariff, lower tariff, and then exceptional cases of tariff as opposed to tariff being the default, because it creates a huge amount of room for horse rating and distortions and rent seeking. But there is a reason why these protectionist tendencies don't last forever. Because after a while, people realize the folly of it, then they relearn the mistakes of their previous generations and they head back toward simpler, cleaner form of governance. We're not there right now. I'm quite sure this is not a permanent state of affairs. We'll head back to the other side of the pendulum in 10 years' time, maybe even earlier than that.

SPEAKER_06 32:20

Given all that's going on for this region, what would you list as your sort of top three concerns from an economics perspective? Or if you want to answer a slightly different question, you could be like, here's three things we as a region need to be doing or building.

SPEAKER_05 32:37

Look, I mean, I'm going to start with a very out-of-fashion response, which is climate change. I mean, the way temperatures are rising in cities, the way places are becoming less and less livable, and the way, particularly water security issue, both in India and China, are becoming more and more paramount. I fear that the wars of the future will not be about land, it would be about water. And that to me is something that we cannot have more urgent deliberation on this thing. It just seems to be absolutely top of the priority list. I see in China tremendous progress being made toward green transition, but I also see still folly toward heavy-handed investment in hydroelectricity projects and that sort of stuff. So we need more sensible policies across the world on climate reason, because to me, the risk of conflict coming from climate change is substantial and hugely underestimated and underappreciated. Second is the issue related to tech. We are excited about the new tech cycle. It could be potentially a game changer. It could change the way we live. It could also bring the whole world down because there's a massive amount of cybersecurity risk, personal security risk, and social risks coming out of the atomization of AI-driven algorithms and data and news and fake news, if you will. So I worry about that as well, that the social cohesion itself could be undermined by this powerful technology. Combine that with climate-related risk, we have very Gen 1 and Gen Z type problems all coming to head. And finally is the territorial issue that, you know, we do have territorial disputes which seem so anachronistic in 2025, but we have them and people shed blood over them, and we have many unresolved conflicts in the world. I don't even know whether tech developments help or hurt those dynamics. I fear they hurt it, not help it. So, yes, plenty of things to think about, but climate and tech-related security, in my view, is absolutely paramount.

SPEAKER_06 34:34

I want to come back to this idea of an alt-world order. There are many groupings where countries have similar concerns and they need to come together. And there are new and emerging concerns like climate change, which are you know existential threats, but they also weigh on certain countries differently to other countries. So I wanted to know if if there are these like new glues that are bringing countries together. Farwa Amor weighed in on this pressing issue of which countries absolutely need to come together in this moment. You've written a lot about climate change, you've written about water and the potential for water disputes and so forth. And obviously those two things are very linked. And I wonder if in a world where a lot of the traditional funders of climate change are receding, the US is taking it much less seriously, and so forth, whether climate change is an opportunity for South Asia, which is facing a very common set of challenges across all countries around what it needs to be dealing with, how it needs to build resilience. At the same time, a lot of the capabilities to then deal with it are sitting in its neighbor like China. And the ability for China to almost exercise soft diplomacy around renewable energy itself is a massive opportunity. I'm just curious, do you think climate could be the thing that allows this geographically contiguous sort of set of countries to maybe come together on the world platform to advocate for, you know, fairer and more funding and better policies, et cetera?

SPEAKER_03 36:10

There are always two ways to answer a question. One is, you know, optimistically, I would say yes. Because if you look at South Asia, there are so many shared climate challenges that it almost makes no sense to not cooperate, to not collaborate, to not develop issue-based sort of cooperation mechanisms that can bring countries together for something that is so evidently a shared challenge between these countries. Whether you look at the erratic monsoon seasons, whether you look at melting glaciers, whether you look at droughts, floods, sea level rises, they are all evident, you know, pollution, smog, evident in all of these countries. So even, you know, you'll have all of these border issues that routinely remind you that these countries don't get along and they are politically in contention, but their people are faced with similar challenges. So I'll teach is an interesting case study, and I don't think we give it enough credit, you know, for its shared cultural fabric, for how much language overlap there is between its people, how much food overlap there is in between its people, institutions, or through international institutional partnerships, to be able to create an environment where these countries can effectively tackle the challenges of climate change in the today and in the future. It can recover from this sort of crises it has experienced through climate, whether it's the 2022 Pakistan flood that you take into account or Bangladesh's coastal resilience mechanisms. They all need more resilient ways to deal with climate change. And that's a very similar call to action. Where the missed opportunity is that there is no like South Asia unified heads of state coming together at COP29, COP30, and saying as one unit that we need this to be done because our region is faced with so-and-so challenge from a climate perspective. Now, water is another area which absolutely demands countries, the Raifarian countries, and speaking terminologies, but really countries that are sharing these rivers to actively come together and collaborate. Now, this can look as not something that happens region-wide, but at least happens basin-wide. You know, so if you have a Brahmaputra, Yalong Songpa, you have China, India, Bangladesh on the table for a conducive sort of composite dialogue that makes sure there's regular transboundary data, water data sharing. There is enough for these countries to comfortably feel that no single country or not the upstream riparon has taken a unilateral action that might compromise how water flows would be to the downstream countries. Similarly, what we've seen in the recent India Pakistan episode is that one of the most stable accords in South Asia, which is the Indus Waters Treaty, is up for debate again. It's up for debate again. It's been put to test. And so in an ideal world, even if you know there are political contentions that go on and they don't necessarily reach dialogue and how they want to be able to move forward diplomatically, there is room for them to come together and still talk water sharing just to make sure that it's not compromising the lives and livelihoods of people on both sides of the water. There is no precedent that's being set in a way that comes and makes the vulnerability on India's side, being a downstream neighbor to China, that could be used where water becomes more and more politicized and securitized in this manner. So, yes, I think in an ideal world, if countries can put geopolitical border diplomatic frictions aside to come together as a unifying voice, I think climate and climate-associated risks, climate finance needs, they can be the clue.

SPEAKER_06 40:04

We'll wrap up on that wishful note. Thanks, Farwa.

SPEAKER_07 40:11

Gorub, you posed a brilliant question to Bhagia. Are we living through a moment closer to the tense uncertainty after World War I or the reconstruction and realignment that followed World War II? Now that you've heard all our guess, where do you land?

SPEAKER_06 40:27

I think we're in a post-World War II moment in one way. And that's an optimistic thing. You know, post-World War II was all about really thinking about new institutions. But actually, I have a nuance to that, because in one way, we're also in a post-World War I, which is I think the intentions of the countries today may reflect more a post-World War I moment, which is very much nothing has really been resolved. How do we interact with each other in a sort of everyone is in it for themselves? There's a lot of pullback. So the intentionality feels like post-World War I. The moment in terms of let's create new institutions and a desire to create new institutions feels like World War II or post-World War II. And it's concerning because even though I think what happened out of post-World War II was that, you know, you had institutions that had some heavy levels of bias that's been criticized very globally north. I do think the intentions in those moments was strong and overall positive. An intention of actually bringing countries together and of stability. It is not clear what the intentions are of countries when they come together today. And I think we need to think about, you know, remaining optimistic in overcoming differences in a way that creates a more stable world, but I don't think it's a given.

SPEAKER_07 41:40

You're right. And I think that while there's a lot of criticism of multilateral institutions today, I think it's important for us to understand that they came in with a certain purpose and it probably requires tweaking. It doesn't need to be, you know, it's not like one throws the baby out with the bath water, but you actually reinvent them and not completely sort of assume that they were of no consequence. And I think that's where a study of history and where they came into being becomes so important. And sadly, Gorov, that brings us to the end of the series.

SPEAKER_06 42:10

It is sad. I've actually really enjoyed doing the series with you. Each of our episodes, you've sort of kicked them off with a you know really sort of sharp and curious questions. And that's been really helpful to me as the person then who has had to moderate a discussion with such great speakers. I've tried to keep your questions at the center of it. And that's been just a really fun exchange to then also come back after each episode and reflect on it.

SPEAKER_07 42:33

Likewise, and you know what? I think we've only just scratched the surface. Many more aspects to touch upon. But for now, I hope we've left our listeners not just with answers, but with better questions. Questions that'll help make sense of an Asia that is quite literally being rewritten as we speak. Thank you all for joining us on this journey. Until next time, goodbye.