By all accounts, Asia’s stock of economic power has been expanding in the last two decades. This has occurred on the back of the rapid and sustained growth of regional economies, not least of which are China and India, whose shares of global trade and GDP have increased considerably during this time.

If anything, the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 that crippled the economies of the United States and Europe and the anti-globalisation sentiments it inadvertently precipitated rendered the shift of geoeconomic power to Asia even more stark.

… Joseph Chinyong Liow is dean and professor of comparative and international politics at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.