The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) brings together 15 countries in East Asia, including all 10 ASEAN members, in the largest-ever free trade agreement. With the inclusion of China and Japan, RCEP accounts for about 30 percent of the world's GDP and population and has been touted a global trade game-changer. But how does RCEP compare with the 11-nation Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which came into force at the end of 2018 – and what would be the dynamics between the two, neither of which include the US? Will RCEP address the need to bring coherence and rules-based order to regional trade in goods and services in the digital age? In this AGI Public Policy Webinar, Dr Deborah Elms of the Asian Trade Centre examines the implications of the new Asia-Pacific trade arrangements for the future of global trade and regional economic integration.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been framed as a strategy that improves regional connectivity while strengthening infrastructure, investment and trade ties between China and other countries, particularly those in Asia. In this webinar, David M Lampton of Johns Hopkins University, co-author of “Rivers of Iron: Railroads And Chinese Power In Southeast Asia”, examines China’s effort to create an intercountry railway system that connects the country with its seven Southeast Asian neighbors, including Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. He also highlights the political strengths and weaknesses of the plan and evaluate the abilities of impacted countries to respond to the BRI.

The past decades have seen the substantial globalization of the world economy. The debate has long begun, however, over whether the world economy has already de-globalized — and whether extraordinary global events such as Covid-19 pandemic have shaken the global economy, creating unprecedented threats to global value chains (GVCs). Based on his paper, “De‐Globalisation? Global Value Chains in the Post‐COVID‐19 Age”, Professor Pol Antràs of Harvard University examines the key drivers for the future of globalization and how major economies within the GVCs would need to react in the post-pandemic world.

In a webinar conducted by the Canadian International Council, Alejandro Reyes, director of knowledge dissemination at the Asia Global Institute, analyzed alongside other experts how the concepts of pandemics, inequalities, human rights and nation states are interconnected in the globalized world.