Great power competition is rising. At the center of this competition lie the US and China, feeding an already ongoing process of slowbalization. The EU and India are pushing for a multipolar world, and the EU in particular is advocating for the return to multilateralism. How can the EU navigate this new reality, which includes mitigating economic fragmentation while still paying attention to excessive dependence on a single source, which is the core value of the EU’s current policy on China? Meanwhile, India would like to usurp China as the leader of the global South. How do these trends affect the ambitions of the US and China?

CAPRI Chair Syaru Shirley Lin spoke at the 2023 Bruegel Annual Meetings on the topic of “Great Power Competition, Economic Fragmentation and the Global Order.”

As nations and global alliances pursue their own agendas, China’s narrative has been that the world has decoupled from them. When countries have their own systems and mindsets so different from each other, it is no surprise that economies have failed to converge. “We are living in a world where rules are changing very quickly, and while China believes they are on the right path to help the South gain prosperity…the simple matter is values and interests’ conflict.”

According to Prof. Lin, countries in Asia should stand on their own feet and not depend on superpowers too occupied with their own agenda. This preface led to the establishment of CAPRI—to improve governance and resilience in the Asia Pacific by creating an international platform connecting the region with the rest of the world.

The session is chaired by Alicia García Herrero, Senior Fellow of Bruegel and a board member of CAPRI, and joined by Sunjoy Joshi, chairman of Observer Research Foundation and a member of CAPRI’s International Advisory Council. Other panelists include Brad W. Setser, Whitney Shepardson senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Guntram B. Wolff, Director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations.