Workshop Outline

The purpose of this workshop is to identify and explore the rise of China and BRICS and their roles and implication for global production chain, global governance and bring Chinese participants and perspectives into the regional and global dialogue. The recent establishments of the BRICS bank, regional institutions and processes such as the Chiang Mai initiative, and security frameworks such as the conference on interaction and confidence building measures in Asia indicate a process of institutional experimentation that seeks to create new forums and avenues for global governance in the competition with the US dominated global governance structure.

The workshop seeks to critically interrogate the framework of power transition, the notion of multipolarity and the empirical phenomenon of global production chain that have been used to analyze the impact of rising power – particularly in China – on the institution and practices of global governance. The workshop seeks to go beyond these conventional approaches and explore whether these new institutional forms reflect the ‘rise of China’ in the context of global political economy which is very different to the rise of Great Britain and the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Is this creating a more plural system of global governance institutionally and normatively? The workshop considers three key questions: Does the BRICS offer a new kind of global production chain? How has the distinctive patterns of economic transformation, particularly the role of the states in the BRICS shaped their approach to global governance? What is the relationship between these ‘BRICS’ approaches to governance and more established institutions particularly the Bretton Woods institution- will it transform them or develop alongside them? How are coherent and sustainable are the BRICS as a group and in what do they link to regional approaches to governance?

This event is co-organised by the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), Nanyang Technological University, Global Production Networks Centre, National University of Singapore and RSIS.