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THE WORLD ECONOMY’S CENTRE OF GRAVITY SHIFTS TO ASIA  
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Vijay Prashad
October 30, 2025
Tricontinental
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_ The US has tried to use economic and military pressure to maintain
a dominant position in Asia, but the rise of China and the region’s
agenda have made it increasingly difficult. _

(Vietnam), Market Scene, 1937, Nguyễn Phan Chánh

 

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social
Research [[link removed]].

On the last day of October 2025, leaders from the 21 nations of the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC [[link removed]]) forum
will meet in the city of Gyeongju in the Republic of Korea (South
Korea) for the organisation’s 33rd summit. Since its founding in
1989 in Canberra, Australia, APEC has promoted building a zone of
‘free and open trade’ – a concept outlined by the Bogor Goals,
which came out of the summit
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in Indonesia in 1994.

APEC is a creature of its times. First, it emerged as an instrument of
Japan’s Pacific Economic Cooperation Council with the goal of
building regional supply chains after the Plaza Accord (1985)
appreciated the yen against the dollar. Second, it was designed during
the Uruguay Round (1986–1994) of the General Agreement on Trade and
Tariffs, which ended with the formation of the World Trade
Organisation. This was the era of trade liberalisation, when the
United States and its G7 partners – flush with the sense that
History had ended and that every country would orbit the US for
eternity – pushed countries to open their economies to North
Atlantic and Japanese corporations. The US hoped that the Maastricht
Treaty (1993), which created the European Union, would lead to a
transatlantic free trade agreement (though this never happened) and
that the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (1994) would yoke Canada
and Mexico to the US in perpetuity.

Leang Seckon (Cambodia), The New Phnom Penh, 2010.

For years, the US came to APEC summits and pushed for a free trade
area that would allow its corporations to dominate the region. The
Bogor Goals of 1994 were meant to serve this purpose, but they failed
for various reasons – including internal fears that Asia’s growing
industrial prowess would outcompete the US. In 2005, four countries
(Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore) signed the Trans-Pacific
Strategic Economic Partnership agreement, which added eight more
countries (Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the US,
and Vietnam) by 2013. But it was too little, too late. The financial
crisis of 2008 sent a tremor through the Global South, which came to
recognise the fragility of the North Atlantic economies and the need
to build a South-South trade and development alternative.

In 2007, the eve of the financial crisis, China was already the
third-largest economy in the world. In 2010, it overtook Japan to
become the second-largest economy. Today, China is the largest trading
partner of most countries in the Asia-Pacific, including 13 of the 21
APEC countries. After the 2008 financial crisis, the Pacific Rim
countries deprioritised pursuing a free trade agreement with the US.
And when US President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the
Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017, the remaining countries continued
discussions without Washington at the table. Ten out of the eleven
signatories of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for
Trans-Pacific Partnership, which emerged from these discussions, were
APEC members.

[Kim In Sok (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), Rain Shower at
the Bus Stop, 2016.]

Kim In Sok (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), _Rain Shower at
the Bus Stop_, 2016.

At a 2011 summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), some members discussed the possibility of an Asia-centric
free trade agreement. Negotiations proceeded with the confidence that
ASEAN’s ten members – plus China and India – would anchor a
significant trade network. India eventually dropped out, but all ten
ASEAN countries, as well as China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and
New Zealand, remained in the process. In 2020, these countries signed
the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – the largest
trading bloc in the world with almost a third of the world’s
population (2.3 billion) and 28% of the world’s Gross Domestic
Product (GDP). By comparison, the European Union accounts for about
18% of world GDP, while NAFTA accounts for roughly 30% of world GDP.
The RCEP accomplished a form of ‘free and open trade’ – what
APEC aspired to achieve with its Bogor Goals – while the US remained
isolated.

But the US retains at least two instruments to exercise power in the
Asia-Pacific: APEC, which is less an economic forum and more an
instrument for the US to discipline its Asian allies, and Rim of the
Pacific [[link removed]] (RIMPAC),
which is its military arm. RIMPAC was created in 1971 as part of the
Cold War architecture against the Soviet Union but has morphed into a
mechanism to exert naval power against China and other
sovereign-seeking countries. RIMPAC, which is organised by the US
Navy’s Indo-Pacific Command and headquartered in Hawai’i, now
includes Israeli military assets. This should create problems for
members such as Colombia, Chile, and Malaysia, which have taken strong
positions against the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinians.
All APEC countries participate in RIMPAC except China, Russia, and
Vietnam (China participated until it was excluded in 2018).

The overlap between the membership of APEC and RIMPAC reveals the US
attempt to exercise hegemony through _economic consent_ (APEC, which
coordinates the economic circuits of capitalism) and _military
coercion_ (RIMPAC, which secures the military conditions for that
economic order). While APEC appears to be merely about investment,
supply chains, and the digital economy, it is in fact a mechanism to
ensure that the US – with at least 260 military bases and rotational
sites, from Australia’s RAAF Base Darwin to Japan’s Kadena Air
Base, and with the RIMPAC military manoeuvres – remains the dominant
power in the region. The US strategy to contain China is now firmly
anchored in the APEC-RIMPAC dynamic. Unable to contest the economic
buoyancy of China and its neighbours, the US resorts to military and
diplomatic pressure campaigns.

Rodel Tapaya (Philippines), _Alamat ni Lam-ang _(Legend of Lam-ang),
2012.

The summit in South Korea will be enveloped by mass demonstrations led
by trade unions of industrial and agricultural workers, human rights
groups, and student organisations. There will also be pockets of
ultra-nationalist supporters of former President Yoon Suk Yeol
(2022–2025) of the right-wing People Power Party, who declared
martial law in 2024. But these groups will not shape the bulk of the
demonstrations, which are for the creation of a people-centred economy
in South Korea and against the attempt to use the APEC summit to
entrench the country’s political elite who remain shaken by the fall
of Yoon.

Hun Kyu Kim (South Korea), _Draft of Long Long Summer_, 2017.

As the world economy’s centre of gravity shifts to Asia, the US will
use every possible means to assert itself. But it simply does not have
the tools to dominate as it once did. One productive use of APEC is
that it provides a platform for US and Chinese leaders to meet at a
time when spaces for bilateral dialogue are shrinking. This is why the
media’s focus has been on the meeting between Trump and China’s
President Xi Jinping.

In 2013, President Xi used the phrase ‘community with a shared
future for humanity’ (人类命运共同体), which entered the 2017
Constitution of the Communist Party of China. At the 2014 APEC summit
in Beijing, Xi said that the Asia-Pacific should not become ‘an
arena of competition’ but should be the location for ‘a community
of common destiny’. Chinese officials began to speak of an
‘Asia-Pacific community with a shared future’
(亚太命运共同体), which echoed the 2013 phrase. The essence of
these phrases is that Asian countries should not strive for bloc
politics or military alliances but should be open to dialogue with
everyone and build platforms that uphold the dignity of all peoples.
While these are interesting phrases, their noble sentiments can only
be realised in the actual process of history – when people across
the region see their lives improve through peace and development.

Warmly,

Vijay

* world economy
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* APEC
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* Trade
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* United States
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* Asia
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* Tariffs
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* China
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* Donald Trump
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* Military
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* diplomacy
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