ASEAN’s perspectives in Asia-Africa Growth Corridor Partnership / TRAN Thi Anh-Dao
Asia’s Post-Pandemic Order and Integration: Outlook of ASEAN and the Indo-Pacific at Crossroads
ASEAN’s perspectives in Asia-Africa Growth Corridor Partnership
TRAN Thi Anh-Dao, University of Rouen (France) & Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC, Thailand)
Since the 2008 global crisis, the weight of South-South exports has exceeded that of South-North exports : in 2018, 57.6% of total exports from developing countries (here referred to as "the South") were destined for other developing economies. Evidence does seem to show a new geography of international trade with renewed and growing interest in South-South trade cooperation. On this basis it is possible to understand increasing trade ties between ASEAN (especially the developing members, labelled here ASEAN8) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In the wake of this trade revival, the objective here is to analyze the intensified trade between ASEAN8 and SSA : how has developed this trade segment in a more general trend connecting Africa and Asia on the one hand, and in inter-regional South-South relations on the other hand ? What are the major obstacles to this commercial momentum in the Indo-Pacific context, and which kind of policies would be required to cope with them ?
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Session 3 / The Indo-Pacific from Southeast Asian Perspectives : Centrality and Multilateralism in Uncertain Times
Chair : Prof. Suthiphand CHIRATHIVAT, Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok)
The Indo-Pacific considered as a maritime “super-region” acknowledge the fact that the Indian Ocean has replaced the Atlantic as the globe’s busiest and most strategically significant trade corridor, whose geographical center in Southeast Asia. The “ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific” in 2019 asserted the “ASEAN Centrality” and its willingness to weigh as a significant player in the Indo-Pacific changing landscape, at the heart of new regional dynamics. These last years, ASEAN has defended an alternative position of “dialogue and cooperation, and not rivalry with China” in the context of Trump’s trade disputes and conflicts between US and China. This session questions the Southeast Asia countries and ASEAN multilateral strategy, in the recent changing context with the new Biden administration’s commitment in the Indo-Pacific. And to what extent will ASEAN countries and institutions be able to defend a stable multipolar world order in the Indo-Pacific region without isolating China, and avoid, as during the Cold War, being the center theatre of conflicts ?
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“Asia’s Post-Pandemic Order and Integration : Outlook of ASEAN and the Indo-Pacific at Crossroads” is an international conference organized by The Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC-CNRS) with the ASEAN Studies Center (Chulalongkorn University) in Bangkok, and the ASEAN-India Centre (AIC), RIS in New Delhi.
8-9 July 2021 - Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
