On February 2, 2024, the Council for International Relations–Greece and I.D.I.S. organized a lecture by Professor Brantly Womack, Professor Emeritus of Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia, on the topic “Recentering Pacific Asia: Regional China and World Order.”
The panel of speakers included:
Athanasios Platias, Professor of Strategy, University of Piraeus, President of CfIR-GR;
Konstantinos Tsimonis, Assistant Professor at King’s College London and Pantheon University, Head of the Chinese Program of the I.D.I.S.;
Vasilis Trigas, Visiting Assistant Professor, Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University.
The conversation was moderated by Professor Konstantina Botsiou, Dean at the University of Piraeus.
The Pacific Rim of Asia–Pacific Asia–is now the world’s largest and most cohesive economic region, and China has returned to its center. China’s global outlook is shaped by its regional experience, first as a pre-modern Asian center, then displaced by Western-oriented modernization, and now returning as a central producer and market in a globalized region.
Developments since 2008 have been so rapid that future directions are uncertain, but China’s presence, population, and production guarantee it a key role. As a global competitor, China has awakened American anxieties and the US-China rivalry has become a major concern for the rest of the world. However, rather than facing a power transition between hegemons, the United States and China are primary nodes in a multi-layered, interconnected global matrix that neither can control. Pacific Asia is now the key venue for working out a new world order.
