Asia summits shaped by geopolitical angst

MUCH of the world’s attention this month is on the COP27 climate conference which started Sunday (Nov 6), but there is also an important series of summits taking place in Asia that will help shape the international order into 2023 and beyond.

While the G20 in Indonesia is a global forum that will attract significant publicity, there is also the regional Asean/East Asia summit in Cambodia, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) leadership meeting in Thailand. These events come in a context where the region is still recovering from the pandemic, which last year’s Apec host New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern called a “once-in-a-century crisis”, and the biggest economic and political shock since World War II to the regional landscape.

Take the example of Apec’s nearly three billion population, which generates around 60 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) across the Pacific Rim from Chile to Russia and Thailand to Australia. Regionally, the pandemic has seen tens of millions of recorded infections, well over one million deaths, and some one million jobs lost.