Jun 2, 2023

Recentering Pacific Asia

Regional China and World Order

Brantly Womack

Hosted by Julie Yu-Wen Chen

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Summary

The Pacific Rim of Asia – Pacific Asia – is now the world's largest and most cohesive economic region, and China has returned to its center. In this conversation, Julie Yu-Wen Chen, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Helsinki discusses with Brantly Womack from the University of Virginia about his new book Recentering Pacific Asia: Regional China and World Order (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

China's global outlook is shaped by its regional experience, first as a pre-modern Asian center, then displaced by Western-oriented modernization, and now returning as a central producer and market in a globalized region. Developments since 2008 have been so rapid that future directions are uncertain, but China's presence, population, and production guarantee it a key role. As a global competitor, China has awakened American anxieties and the US-China rivalry has become a major concern for the rest of the world. However, rather than facing a power transition between hegemons, the US and China are primary nodes in a multi-layered, interconnected global matrix that neither can control. Brantly Womack argues that Pacific Asia is now the key venue for working out a new world order.

Recentering Pacific Asia: Regional China and World Order is written by Brantly Womack. The book contains commentaries from Wang Gungwu (National University of Singapore), Wu Yu-shan (Academia Sinica), Qin Yaqing (China Foreign Affairs University), and Evelyn Goh (Australian National University).

Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Since 2023, she has been involved in EUVIP: The EU in the Volatile Indo-Pacific Region, a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe coordination and support action 101079069 (HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03). In this project, she leads the preparatory research and provides supervision and counselling to junior researchers. Brantly Womack is on the international advisory board of EUVIP.