The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and the Chile Pacific Foundation welcomes you to attend our final joint webinar in the series ASEAN and The Americas: China’s Belt & Road Initiative and its Impact on the Political and Social Dynamics in the Indo-Pacific: Implications for Canada’s and Chile’s Foreign Policy.
Views on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) vary significantly depending on where they are generated. While most of the Western Hemisphere perceives the BRI as a massive international, investment-lending program for the Chinese to exert and project influence and geopolitical power, in Southeast Asian nations in particular, there are alternative narratives that highlight the value of collaboration between China and the expanded Indo-Pacific region, especially in the most developing countries.
The dynamics of Chinese engagement within the Indo-Pacific region through the BRI as a flagship policy is bringing about a new set of social interactions that remain poorly understood by Western citizens without access to non-English literature. For actors in the ASEAN region, people-to-people, NGO-to-NGO, city- to-city and many other sub-national ties are driving transformation in the region. Such sub-national engagement has impacts on institutional stability, prospects for trade, innovation and economic development.
This webinar aims to discuss some of these alternative drivers, while breaking down key aspects of the BRI that are typically underscored in the Western context, in order to better understand development in the ASEAN region. The roundtable will contribute to a more holistic account of Asia’s internal dynamics that Canadian and Chilean policy-makers can use to inform their policy thinking and engagement in the region.
This webinar will be 90 mins long.
Spanish interpretation is made available for this webinar.
Interpretación al español disponible para este webinar.
Speakers:
Andrés Bórquez Basaez, Assistant Professor / Coordinator of the Chinese Studies Program at the Institute of International Studies, University of Chile
Elina Noor, Director, Political-Security Affairs, Asia Society Policy Institute and Distinguished Fellow, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada
Jeffrey Reeves, Vice-President Research & Strategy, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada
