[News] The World Economy’s Centre of Gravity Shifts to Asia

[Anti-Imperialist News]

View this email in your browser 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=3629c6ca7c&e=d206d0a40d> 


<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=749b83aa82&e=d206d0a40d> 


The World Economy’s Centre of Gravity Shifts to Asia: The Forty-Fourth 
Newsletter (2025)

The US has tried to use economic and military pressure to maintain a 
dominant position in Asia, but the rise of China and the region’s agenda 
have made it increasingly difficult.


Nguyễn Phan Chánh**(Vietnam), /Market Scene/, 1937.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=aefe7b84d6&e=d206d0a40d>.

On the last day of October 2025, leaders from the 21 nations of the 
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=c205978fde&e=d206d0a40d>) 
forum will meet in the city of Gyeongju in the Republic of Korea (South 
Korea) for the organisation’s 33^rd summit. Since its founding in 1989 
in Canberra, Australia, APEC has promoted building a zone of ‘free and 
open trade’ – a concept outlined by the Bogor Goals, which came out of 
the summit 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=5b7aacb979&e=d206d0a40d> 
in Indonesia in 1994.

APEC is a creature of its times. First, it emerged as an instrument of 
Japan’s Pacific Economic Cooperation Council with the goal of building 
regional supply chains after the Plaza Accord (1985) appreciated the yen 
against the dollar. Second, it was designed during the Uruguay Round 
(1986–1994) of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, which ended 
with the formation of the World Trade Organisation. This was the era of 
trade liberalisation, when the United States and its G7 partners – flush 
with the sense that History had ended and that every country would orbit 
the US for eternity – pushed countries to open their economies to North 
Atlantic and Japanese corporations. The US hoped that the Maastricht 
Treaty (1993), which created the European Union, would lead to a 
transatlantic free trade agreement (though this never happened) and that 
the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (1994) would yoke Canada and 
Mexico to the US in perpetuity.

Leang Seckon (Cambodia), /The New Phnom Penh/, 2010.

For years, the US came to APEC summits and pushed for a free trade area 
that would allow its corporations to dominate the region. The Bogor 
Goals of 1994 were meant to serve this purpose, but they failed for 
various reasons – including internal fears that Asia’s growing 
industrial prowess would outcompete the US. In 2005, four countries 
(Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore) signed the Trans-Pacific 
Strategic Economic Partnership agreement, which added eight more 
countries (Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the US, and 
Vietnam) by 2013. But it was too little, too late. The financial crisis 
of 2008 sent a tremor through the Global South, which came to recognise 
the fragility of the North Atlantic economies and the need to build a 
South-South trade and development alternative.

In 2007, the eve of the financial crisis, China was already the 
third-largest economy in the world. In 2010, it overtook Japan to become 
the second-largest economy. Today, China is the largest trading partner 
of most countries in the Asia-Pacific, including 13 of the 21 APEC 
countries. After the 2008 financial crisis, the Pacific Rim countries 
deprioritised pursuing a free trade agreement with the US. And when US 
President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the Trans-Pacific 
Partnership in 2017, the remaining countries continued discussions 
without Washington at the table. Ten out of the eleven signatories of 
the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific 
Partnership, which emerged from these discussions, were APEC members.

Kim In Sok (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), /Rain Shower at the 
Bus Stop/, 2016.

At a 2011 summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 
some members discussed the possibility of an Asia-centric free trade 
agreement. Negotiations proceeded with the confidence that ASEAN’s ten 
members – plus China and India – would anchor a significant trade 
network. India eventually dropped out, but all ten ASEAN countries, as 
well as China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, remained 
in the process. In 2020, these countries signed the Regional 
Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – the largest trading bloc in 
the world with almost a third of the world’s population (2.3 billion) 
and 28% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By comparison, the 
European Union accounts for about 18% of world GDP, while NAFTA accounts 
for roughly 30% of world GDP. The RCEP accomplished a form of ‘free and 
open trade’ – what APEC aspired to achieve with its Bogor Goals – while 
the US remained isolated.

But the US retains at least two instruments to exercise power in the 
Asia-Pacific: APEC, which is less an economic forum and more an 
instrument for the US to discipline its Asian allies, and Rim of the 
Pacific 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=bb8e0f0f9e&e=d206d0a40d> 
(RIMPAC), which is its military arm. RIMPAC was created in 1971 as part 
of the Cold War architecture against the Soviet Union but has morphed 
into a mechanism to exert naval power against China and other 
sovereign-seeking countries. RIMPAC, which is organised by the US Navy’s 
Indo-Pacific Command and headquartered in Hawai’i, now includes Israeli 
military assets. This should create problems for members such as 
Colombia, Chile, and Malaysia, which have taken strong positions against 
the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinians. All APEC countries 
participate in RIMPAC except China, Russia, and Vietnam (China 
participated until it was excluded in 2018).

The overlap between the membership of APEC and RIMPAC reveals the US 
attempt to exercise hegemony through /economic consent/ (APEC, which 
coordinates the economic circuits of capitalism) and /military coercion/ 
(RIMPAC, which secures the military conditions for that economic order). 
While APEC appears to be merely about investment, supply chains, and the 
digital economy, it is in fact a mechanism to ensure that the US – with 
at least 260 military bases and rotational sites, from Australia’s RAAF 
Base Darwin to Japan’s Kadena Air Base, and with the RIMPAC military 
manoeuvres – remains the dominant power in the region. The US strategy 
to contain China is now firmly anchored in the APEC-RIMPAC dynamic. 
Unable to contest the economic buoyancy of China and its neighbours, the 
US resorts to military and diplomatic pressure campaigns.

Rodel Tapaya (Philippines), /Alamat ni Lam-ang /(Legend of Lam-ang), 2012.

The summit in South Korea will be enveloped by mass demonstrations led 
by trade unions of industrial and agricultural workers, human rights 
groups, and student organisations. There will also be pockets of 
ultra-nationalist supporters of former President Yoon Suk Yeol 
(2022–2025) of the right-wing People Power Party, who declared martial 
law in 2024. But these groups will not shape the bulk of the 
demonstrations, which are for the creation of a people-centred economy 
in South Korea and against the attempt to use the APEC summit to 
entrench the country’s political elite who remain shaken by the fall of 
Yoon.

Hun Kyu Kim (South Korea), /Draft of Long Long Summer/, 2017.

As the world economy’s centre of gravity shifts to Asia, the US will use 
every possible means to assert itself. But it simply does not have the 
tools to dominate as it once did. One productive use of APEC is that it 
provides a platform for US and Chinese leaders to meet at a time when 
spaces for bilateral dialogue are shrinking. This is why the media’s 
focus has been on the meeting between Trump and China’s President Xi 
Jinping.

In 2013, President Xi used the phrase ‘community with a shared future 
for humanity’ (人类命运共同体), which entered the 2017 Constitution of the 
Communist Party of China. At the 2014 APEC summit in Beijing, Xi said 
that the Asia-Pacific should not become ‘an arena of competition’ but 
should be the location for ‘a community of common destiny’. Chinese 
officials began to speak of an ‘Asia-Pacific community with a shared 
future’ (亚太命运共同体), which echoed the 2013 phrase. The essence of these 
phrases is that Asian countries should not strive for bloc politics or 
military alliances but should be open to dialogue with everyone and 
build platforms that uphold the dignity of all peoples. While these are 
interesting phrases, their noble sentiments can only be realised in the 
actual process of history – when people across the region see their 
lives improve through peace and development.

Warmly,

Vijay

<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=c1e6e6dd1c&e=d206d0a40d> 


Website <www.tricontinental.org>

Facebook 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=322595b2e7&e=d206d0a40d> 


Twitter 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=ee66241928&e=d206d0a40d> 


Instagram 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=77855f5dec&e=d206d0a40d> 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20251030/aba2eb4c/attachment-0001.htm>