Asia

The just concluded 4th East Asia Summit (EAS) in Thailand will long be remembered as the venue for seemingly competing ideas from Australia and Japan for reorganizing regional cooperation in Asia. But will it also be known for having altered the course of Asian multilateralism?

In PacNet 65, Laurence Brahm argued that the international economic and financial architecture was undergoing renovation. His claim that China was both promoting this transformation and will benefit greatly from it triggered considerable commentary. We reprint some of the comments below, along with his response.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, familiarly known as SBY, will be inaugurated for a second term on Oct. 20, 2009. As the first democratically elected president and the first to be elected to a second term, SBY has opportunities that no other Indonesian leader has had.

The current economic crisis has hit China hard. China's high savings rate is a significant deterrent to boosting domestic consumption, and with little sign of a resumption of global demand for Chinese exports, the leadership recognized early in the crisis that it needed to take aggressive action to ensure growth from alternative sources.

Amid the fallout from the global financial crisis, much has been written about whether the United States can continue as the world's predominant economic power and whether the emerging BRIC economies, particularly China, are poised to challenge the current financial and economic architecture. In recent months, speculation has focused on the future of the U.S.

The October 2009 Issue of Comparative Connections is available online:

-Regional Overview: Promises Kept, for Better and for Worse
-U.S.-Japan Relations: Interpreting Change
-U.S.-China Relations: Strategic & Economic Dialogue Sets Agenda for Cooperation
-U.S.-Korea Relations: Bill’s Excellent Adventure

Australia’s government swung from the right to the left of the political spectrum in 2007. The U.S. did the same in 2008. Yet, not much changed in the fundamentals of the 57-year-old U.S.-Australia alliance. The assertion of alliance continuity, however, comes with a major caveat: the tectonic effects being exerted by China’s rise.