Shaping the Future of Asia Book Launch

This is the IMF Asia and Pacific Department's flagship publication for the 2026 Annual Meetings. I am Pawit Pasin from the Communications Department.

Today's event will begin with opening remarks from the Managing Director of the IMF, followed by the presentation of the book's key findings by the Director of the Asia and Pacific Department. We will then hear from a distinguished panel of leaders and experts who will discuss the opportunities and challenges facing Asia over the coming decades and what will be needed to sustain strong, inclusive and resilient growth.

To begin, please join me in welcoming the Managing Director of the IMF, Ms. Kristalina Georgieva.

Thank you, Managing Director. It is now my pleasure to invite Mr. Krishna Srinivasan, Director of the IMF Asia and Pacific Department, to present the main messages and findings from the book. Krishna, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Managing Director. This book in many ways traces back to the missions I did with the Managing Director to Asia, where we thought about the fact that, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about the conjuncture, but we need to take a more holistic view of the developments in the region, looking at the megatrends that are happening around us. So in some sense we wanted to move away from, you know, what's happening right now, talk about Asia and the future, and that's why it's called Shaping the Future of Asia.

We had a conference here in Bangkok not too long ago where we met with lots of stakeholders, you know, CSOs, professionals, academics and so on, and all of that is reflected in this book. This is a book which is written by staff in the Asia-Pacific Department at the IMF, many of whom are not here. But my heartfelt gratitude to Thomas Hobliger and Raghav Anand who have done the heavy lifting in putting this book together. So let me talk a little bit about the key messages in the book.

Yeah, so there are three elements of the story. The first part, Asia's ascent, you know, what determines, what enabled Asia to grow so fast. The megatrends which are going to shape the future of Asia and the rest of the world, and what it means for policy. So let me go over this. I want to give more time to the panel, so I'll go over this very quickly, but let me start with the ascent.

So the foundations of growth in Asia have very few parallels in economic history. Now you'll see that, you know, we talked about rapid development of South Korea, Taiwan, Province of China, Hong Kong SAR and Singapore in the second half of the 20th century, often referred to as the Asian miracle. But we can talk about a broader Asian economic miracle since the early 1990s.

Asia has more than doubled its income per capita relative to the G7, catching up very fast. Extreme poverty, as I mentioned, has fallen from over a quarter to below 5%. And the region now delivers two-thirds of global growth. In fact, this year, as MD mentioned, it will be 68%. So what powered Asia's rapid ascent?

Now Asia's rise rested on strong factor accumulation: more capital and more workers. Investment did the heavy lifting. In fact, Asia invested about 27% of GDP between 1995 and 2024. Capital deepening is the largest single driver of per capita income growth in emerging and low-income countries.

Second, labor was the other engine. The region added about 1 billion working-age people between 1990 and 2020, which is again an example of a powerful demographic dividend. So this brings us to the question: what else mattered? And I think there are two things which are very, very important, which is openness.

Openness acted as a multiplier on the first two growth engines. In fact, trade gave Asia a global market. Its share of world trade rose by 10 percentage points to 40% between 2000 and 2025. That bigger footprint drove structural transformation. Trade, in fact, explains 39% of the transformation in industry from 2007 to 2023.

And the payoff was in productivity. Moving workers into more productive jobs delivered up to about 40% of productivity growth in low-income Asia. That contribution was much larger in Asia than the rest of the world. So capital, labor and openness have been Asia's traditional growth engine. But what lies ahead?

So here we talk about, the book has, in the book we talk about five shifts, but we're going to focus on three key forces shaping Asia's growth prospects. And one, as the MD mentioned, is demographics. The second is technology. And third, you can call, we say fragmentation, but it's more about integration. So these three megatrends are what will be talked about at this panel discussion this afternoon.

So on the first one, demographics. Asia is aging fast. It is aging faster than any other region in the world. Fertility has fallen from 6 to 1.6. Very sharp decline. The share of population of 65 and older will double by 2050, from 11 to 20%. The dependency ratio will double and the workforce is about to decline.

This is a sharp reversal compared to what we saw over the previous quarter century. As I said, a fast-growing working-age population was the key engine of growth. Now that is shifting. But then this region also masks differences across countries. They sit at very different stages of transition.

So like I said, I like to describe this: there are three Asias within one Asia. You have countries in Asia which we call, which are in deep blue here, which we call, where they're called early-dividend economies, where examples are Philippines and Nepal, where they are still gaining workers.

Economies marked in light blue are what we call late-dividend economies, where you still have a growing workforce but with a declining share in the total age population, in the total population. And finally, what you have in the burgundy here are countries which are what we call post-dividend. Examples are China, Korea and Japan, where they could lose up to a quarter of their workforce by 2050.

So there is diversity within Asia, which is also a source of opportunity. And the point here is, even the aging economies have policy levers which can be put to use to overcome the impact of aging.

Now here we talk about, again the panel will talk a little bit more about that, the policy levers remain quite large. Raising women's employment-to-population ratio to that of men would increase the working numbers to 112 million workers. Just by increasing women's participation you could gain a lot, and you can also increase old-age participation thanks to healthy aging.

So you have things you can do to counter the impact of aging. And so here we show the impact: if you didn't do any reform, you would get a very modest increase from the demographic dividend. However, if you did reforms, then GDP per capita can rise by about 20% in early-dividend and late-dividend economies in the region.

And then the counterweight, of course, is the technology, which I'll talk about in a minute. As the MD mentioned, we talk about technology here and in particular about AI.

So, Asia already has a strong digital foundation for new technologies to build up. You all have heard about that in various publications we put out. Our analysis finds that AI in particular could raise annual growth by 0.5 to 1 percentage points in advanced Asian economies, 0.2 to 0.5 in emerging market and developing economies.

Again, we have to take all of this with some caution because again AI is new, it's evolving and so on. But based on the work you have done so far, these are the gains that you can see, and that could be enough to offset the impact of aging. Again, let me be very clear: these are scenarios, not forecasts. So I want to just say that let's take everything with a piece of caution.

And again, when it comes to AI, there is divergence. AI could spread fast, but readiness varies across countries and regions. So technology, while giving you a lot in terms of positive impact on productivity and so on, it could also widen gaps across countries and within countries, right?

And so that's why across countries you can now see that advanced economies in the region are much more AI-prepared than the other one, than emerging markets and low-income countries. And within countries also there's divergence. What matters is whether AI augments workers or automates jobs.

Advanced economies for sure are more exposed, but they're also better placed to benefit. Emerging markets are less exposed, but also less in a position to capture the upside. The good news here is reforms that raise skills and productivity can bring adoption forward by a decade or more. And that's the thing which you'll hear about more in the panel.

So what does it mean for jobs? In our, going beyond the book, in our forthcoming Regional Economic Outlook, we have done some work on what does it mean for workers. What we find is that since the launch of ChatGPT, job postings requiring emerging AI skills have climbed up with AI capability roughly twice as fast in highly exposed occupations.

For sure you're seeing there's been some decline in demand for workers, and we find that demand for workers in occupations which require AI have declined by 10%, but there it's stabilized. So what it means is that there's more of a reallocation of labor demand across occupations. So there's a lot of scope for countries who are able to reap, are able to use AI effectively. Job demand could actually be a lot more positive going forward.

Finally, let me finish with the third force, which is integration. What we have seen is that trade restrictions imposed worldwide have nearly tripled since 2019. So in some sense, if you could use a word, the world has become a lot more fragmented in that sense, and that hits Asia the hardest because this region is the most exposed to trade.

But the good news is that Asia itself is an untapped market. What do I mean by that? If you look at Asia as a whole and when you look at intermediate goods trade, Asia compares quite favorably with EU and North America. Slightly below but very much comparable. But if you look at final goods, Asia does very poorly compared to EU or North America.

So Asia's integration was built around supply chains, not final demand. But this is the region which also has huge potential. So if there's a lot more integration within the region, there could be significant potential for growth. And again, as the MD mentioned in the next slide, we see that if there was more integration by reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers, GDP could go up by 1.8%.

Now the 1.8% might sound like a small number, but just translate that, it's a huge number in terms of how many more jobs you can create and so on. And here the other point we identify in the book is that it's not just about goods. When you look at integration of services, again, Asia doesn't do very well. So there's huge potential for Asia to gain from greater integration within the region.

The point here is that, you know, if you look at trade agreements in Asia, they're significantly less deep than what you see in other parts of the world, notably the EU, in terms of how many provisions are legally enforceable and so on and so forth. So if you move the frontier in terms of trade agreements, the benefits to Asia could be quite significant.

So let me finish with one chart, one last slide, which is Asia's next chapter. So here the point we're making is demographics are not destiny. You can act now to still gain the demographic dividend. Productivity gains, AI can change the game. Again, you have to adapt in terms of being prepared for AI and so on. And the final thing is look to the region for growth, and that's also a buffer against external shocks.

The last slide here, the book, I would say if there's one message I would like you to take from the book is this: at 0.8% TFP growth, faster productivity offsets entirely the demographic drag, even in post-dividend economies. So the key here is productivity, which is a policy variable, and working on that will make a huge difference, and regional integration can lift growth even further.

I will leave the panel with five questions. I mean, actually we've given the panel more questions than this, but this is the slide: prepare your workers to make best use of AI; spread technology. A lot of countries are spending public money on AI adoption. It's important to spend equal amounts of money on AI diffusion, which is important. Deepen integration, huge potential there within Asia, and that would also, when you say, grow inclusively. And finally, adapt and cooperate. I think cooperation is very, very key, which is something which you'll hear from the panel. So let me stop here. Thank you so much for your attention.

Thank you very much, Krishna, for that insightful presentation and questions for thoughts. Well, we now move to our panel discussion section. Please join me in welcoming first Mr. Nigel Clark, Deputy Managing Director of IMF.

Next, Mr. Changyong Rhee, former Governor of the Bank of Korea.

Mr. Vira Rojpojchanarat, Chairman of Thailand Development Research Institute.

Our final panelist, Mr. Ananta Aswathanarayana, Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India.

Moderating today's discussion is Mr. Jing Shien, Vice President of Asia Society.

And with that, I'm pleased to hand the floor to you, Jing. Jing, over to you.

Thank you. Thank you, MC. That makes my job much easier. I'd like to start by thanking IMF for the leadership. This is a critical time, and Krishna, wonderful overview that gives a wonderful foundation to start. And MD also, although she's no longer in the room, but that's really, we give credit to the authors and to take responsibilities.

Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to this discussion of Shaping the Future of Asia. We have a wonderful panel to discuss. Just a few weeks ago, IMF's team in Asia launched the China book. Now we are broadening the discussion to the wider region, Asia.

Asia's economic transformation over the past several decades, as Krishna has mentioned, is one of the great development stories, but we are facing a tremendous amount of challenges going forward. Past success doesn't guarantee the future prosperity. So how do we navigate demographic aging, technological disruption, and geopolitical tension in this changing environment is the central question. How can Asia adapt?

So gladly we have a wonderful group of leading voices in the region, which, as you said, is multiple Asia within Asia. So Nigel, if we can please start from you. What do you think are the ingredients of the past success of the region, and which do you think could be still replicated to today's environment, which cannot?

Thank you, Jing. I mean, let's first of all just contextualize it by reminding ourselves of the remarkable growth and transformation of Asia. As you heard the MD and Krishna mention, growth in Asia accounted for 25% of world growth back in 1990, and today it accounts for 68% of world growth. Poverty, extreme poverty was 25%, it's now 5%. And very interestingly, income per capita has grown twice as fast as the G7 ex-Japan.

Now, I guess the most profound sort of analysis over that period, I think, would conclude that Asia's transformation in this regard has been a result of policy choice. And the policy choices I'd like to focus on are three or four in particular, and then maybe some lessons for other parts of the world, possibly.

The first policy choice is emphasis on a structural transformation of the Asian economy, broadly defined, where we'd have seen Asia, which would have been heavily invested in agriculture, moving into higher productivity areas such as manufacturing and services.

We have also seen, that's the first. The second sort of policy choice Asia would have made, the decision to invest deeply in global supply chains, which transform what would have been small markets into global markets, and today Asia accounts for 40% of world trade.

The third is a heavy focus on investment, investment in human and physical capital, and that investment averaged about 27% of GDP, far exceeding investment as a percentage of GDP in Europe or in North America. And fourth, as you heard Krishna mention, Asia benefited from a huge demographic dividend where over a billion people entered the workforce over this period.

The lessons that can be drawn on this, first of all, is how much agency you have, right? These were all policy choices by Asian administrations. And if we recall 30 years ago, there's the Asian financial crisis. Asia used this as a catalyst for reform, repairing the financial sector, invested in credible and sustainable policy choices and strengthening institutional apparatus.

More specifically, in Thailand, in Indonesia, in Philippines and in South Korea, we saw a move towards entrenching inflation targeting and strengthening monetary policy frameworks. We saw in Thailand and Indonesia strengthening fiscal institutions and introducing rules-based fiscal frameworks. We've seen in Thailand and Malaysia, you know, corporate restructurings, etc., have increased investor confidence and so on.

So we have seen a decisive move to macro stability, policy credibility, which are prerequisites. Now the lesson for the rest of the world is openness pays, but it only pays if it is followed with huge investment and policy credibility. Macro stability are prerequisites, but it needs to be followed up with structural transformation reforms and huge investment.

Thank you, Nigel. That's a wonderful overview. And indeed, as you said, the policy choices, which is really what is pushing productivity, how better policy really changes that spectrum Krishna laid out, whether it's 0.5% or it's 1% advanced economy or 0.2 to 0.5 emerging markets.

So Changyong, let me bring you into this. I think Korea has went from a developing economy to a global tech and industry powerhouse, one of the leading developed economies nowadays. Looking back, what policies do you think have contributed to this growth story and what others can learn from that?

Thank you, Jing. And first, I'm very honored to be in this panel. And many Korean economists often ask this question, but I will assure you that I wouldn't have any magic wand. So many people can sometimes, some people mention the rural modernization and community development policies. Some people may say export-led industrial policy, education and strong bureaucracy. But I have my own view.

I want to emphasize two things today. One is governance, especially corruption. And the second thing I want to emphasize is Nigel's last point that we have, you know, transition from government-led economic policy framework to the private sector-led framework after the 1997 Asian crisis.

So if I can mention the first point, the corruption and the governance. I've been working for the ADB and IMF for a long time. I have visited many developing countries and I ask a question: these countries actually tried many similar policies that Korea did in the past, and why Korea alone in some sense could succeed?

And in my personal opinion is that when I compare with many other failed cases, I think that the level of integrity and the corruption level was much better in Korea, especially among high-level government officers and the high-level, you know, top politicians.

Korea took off our economy in the 60s, 70s under the President Park Chung-hee regime. He is criticized, his long ruling and other political issues, but integrity of him and his family is trusted by the people, and that laid the ground for other development policy to work. I give several examples.

One is foreign aid, and we have seen many cases that foreign aid ended up in private wealth accumulation rather than government use. In Korea, his anti-corruption emphasis made foreign aid to be channeled into the development.

Second example is capital control. President Park Chung-hee made the capital outflow, the illegal outflow of the rich people, the most punished, most severe crime, and he punished it very seriously. So this capital control policy at the early stage of economic development made it possible that the export revenue from the major companies to be recycled into the domestic investment.

And then still I think, in some sense, given the very situation of the low savings, this capital control really, you know, acted to some kind of virtue circle of the, you know, recycle of the capital among ourselves.

And third example is value-added tax. Korea introduced value-added tax very early stage as a developing country, early in the 70s, and there are huge protests from the small shops and the people. But I think, given that his trust on him, at least for the Korean policy, made many government officers to pass through this value-added tax system.

And that really increased the fiscal soundness of Korea, and that became a ground for the industrial policy by the government, using the revenue. So I think the IMF is now emphasizing in Article IV about this governance issue. I think this is the right thing.

And for the macro policy to work, I think having a sound governance system so that government can be trusted is a very important one, and I strongly urge that. Definitely there is a resistance from the politicians and the government officers, why is IMF intervening in these governance issues, it's not a mandate, but I think for macroeconomics to work, I think governance issues are essential. That's my personal view.

Second, if I go back to the transition of government-led policy and private sector-led policies, we had very successful government-led industrial policies. But as time goes on, we are seeing the unintended negative side effect of the government policies, especially policy loans and other things.

Then I think the 1997 Korea crisis is definitely, I'm sorry, Peter, Thailand is affected by the spillover from Thailand. But on the other hand, at the ground, I think it really also the kind of accumulated negative side effect of government-led policy was one of the reasons for the crisis.

It was unfortunate Korea suffered a lot from this 1997 crisis. But the bright side of this crisis is, as you mentioned, we used it as an opportunity for structural reform. Especially, I think it was very important that because of this crisis, people started to understand government is not omnipotent. Government has a limitation.

So we did corporate restructuring. So after the corporate restructuring, survivors became much stronger. So outside of the government's hand, the financial system is part of the IMF conditionality, and then they became more privatized. Central bank became independent from the government, and modern monetary policy started.

So in some sense, I think we are not intended, but this crisis gave us a chance to smoothly move from the government policy to the private sector policy. And the fruits that we are enjoying now, we are really enjoying a semiconductor super cycle at this moment, high-tech companies. I think those kind of things could not be developed with government effort alone.

So I think we are benefiting in some sense from this 1997 crisis. People may be mad if I say so, but it was a kind of, you know, hidden blessing to our economic transition.

So in that sense, I watch China with interest. Growth is still government-led. So my question is, can it move to a private sector-led high-income growth without a crisis, or whether it can continue to have a high growth without private sector participation? I'm following this very closely.

Thank you. Thank you. That's a very profound question you put. But you also mentioned two historical points. One is 1997. I think that's a very important historical juncture.

That's why many people say I'm too close to the IMF. So.

Another one, I think 1991, when the IMF and World Bank annual conference came to Thailand last time, where the ascent of the Asia economic story started, where the book has been tracking. So this is actually a good segue to get to Vira. As Changyong mentioned, maybe some of the policy and institutionalization is transferable, but not all the policies would be. What do you see from Thailand's vantage point? What has been working for you from your experience of raising productivity, and what might not work?

Yeah. No, thank you very much. Many thanks to IMF for inviting me to be part of this panel. It is an honor indeed. You know, Thailand has become part of the global value chains in the 1980s, and I think there were three, four main components that we could attribute on. First, it's related to the policies of outward-looking export promotion strategies. But before that, in the 1960s and 1970s, Thailand adopted import substitution policies.

But if you may recall the oil shocks of the 1970s, the balance of payment was under pressure. So early 1980s, the government changed its policy stance and adopted a more export-oriented policy, promoting investments. The Thai government approach may be different from the Korean government.

We adopted more or less a market-driven strategy, that the government did not prescribe any rigid industrial policies, and the government did not participate directly in the market. So the industrialization process in Thailand was driven mainly by the private sector, with market incentives, with incentives provided by the government.

Second component was a heavy investment in infrastructure during the 1980s. If you're familiar with Thailand, you may have heard about the Eastern Seaboard. It was established as a new manufacturing hub for Thailand, and that occurred after the discovery of gas in the Gulf of Thailand. So the Eastern Seaboard became a major production base for the chemical industries and also other supporting industries.

The government also invested a lot in, you know, logistic networks all over the country.

Third, related to what Nigel and Changyong mentioned, I would attribute the rapid growth in Thailand to strong technocrats and strong...

Institutions. I'm sure you all have heard about political uncertainties in Thailand. We have had a very volatile government during the past three or four decades. But there are strong economic institutions, strong technocrats who had long-term visions and pragmatic ways of implementing all the policies that could help set the foundations for Thailand.

And the last domestic component that I would attribute to is related to the reform that occurred after 1997. Although Thailand might have triggered the crisis, since then we could withstand all the external shocks, all the global crises — no more crises after 1997. [laughter]

And one could attribute that to many of the prudent macroeconomic management, the reforms of financial institution supervision, the reforms of the exchange rate systems, the deepening of the capital market in Thailand, and financial stability throughout the past few decades. So these were the main domestic components that the Thai authorities put in place. But then the external forces were also turning in our favor, and the external forces were serving as a catalyst for rapid industrialization. And I could think of two. One was the Plaza Accord of 1985. At that time, when the yen appreciated significantly and Japanese manufacturers were looking at relocating their production, with the foundations put in place, Thailand could attract not only Japanese investors but also investors from Korea, from Taiwan, and global players. And then that helped create many industrial clusters in Thailand. The other catalyst, it was also highlighted by Krishna in the book, is the trade integration, trade liberalization, starting with the ASEAN Free Trade Agreements in 1992, and then it got expanded into other trade agreements like RCEP with Japan, China, ASEAN, and lately AFTA.

So when we had the foundations in place and we had all these catalysts in our favor, that resulted in rapid manufacturing growth and the formation of clusters in Thailand, and helped strengthen Thailand's position in the global value chain. But another point that I should highlight, which is also a point that Krishna touched upon: how could Thailand translate this economic growth into sustained improvement in the quality of life of the people at large? I think that is very important and could be a good lesson for other countries. It also poses challenges when we look at the next phase of structural transformation.

When we had in the 1980s and 1990s, the structural transformations that happened in Thailand were more or less driven by labor-intensive manufacturing. So we had workers moving from the low-productivity agricultural sector to higher-productivity manufacturing sectors, so that the whole economy gains productivity and the workers at large could gain better income, better earnings. And with strong family ties in Thailand, most workers would send the money back home in rural areas, and that's a way to channel benefits from the cities, from industrial estates, going to rural areas.

The government also invested a lot in improving the irrigation system, the rural road network, improving productivity in the agricultural sector. The government also reinforced these developments with structural social policies like the universal health care policies, offering more or less free health care services to everyone. Universal education policies, initially started with primary education, then they got expanded to secondary education with a lot of support to higher education. So this helped improve the skills and the efficiency not only for people living in urban cities and industrial estates — that's how the benefits could be shared across the country. Looking ahead, it will be a different challenge, and we can come back.

Of course, thank you. There's a lot of success to look back to. And Ananta, you have been in deep contemplation — I've been observing your face. You are the only active-duty official as the chief economic advisor to the government of India, which is a very unique case — one of the most successful economic stories in the current world with economic globalization and most recently rapid digital transformation. So what are your secrets?

Thank you. [clears throat] So while the MD mentioned that from 25% now Asia contributes 68% to incremental global GDP, I'm gratified to note that post-pandemic, the bulk of Asia's incremental contribution to global GDP has come from the sustained high growth that India has been able to maintain post-COVID. Now, how has that come about? Of course, I can go all the way back to the 1950s onwards, when certain higher education institutions in technology and management were created, which 40 years later paved the way for the boom in the information technology sector exports. And then we had the green revolution, where we were dependent on food imports, one shipment at a time, to a country which now has more than $50 billion of agricultural exports. But coming slightly closer to the current time, basically starting from the 1990s, the economic liberalization that was ushered in at the beginning of that decade as a response to the balance of payments crisis that India faced. I think the liberalization of the financial sector, banking, exchange rate regime, and mostly product markets, elimination of industrial licensing, did clearly set the growth path up from sort of a relatively stable 3.5% real GDP growth on average, which prevailed up to the end of the 1980s or 70s. And then while that definitely helped to set up the boom in the IT exports, and clearly the Y2K bug, which happened in 2000, played a very big role. So we cannot afford to ignore serendipitous factors also in our successes, and that was one of them. But the investment in higher education, which I referred to earlier, contributed to the ability of India to take advantage of that serendipitous break that we got. But then, in spite of that, we always had this challenge of sustaining high growth over a relatively longer frame because we had supply-side deficiency. So what has happened since 2014 particularly has been the ability to bridge the supply-side deficiency. The public investment in infrastructure, the investment in financial inclusion, and structural reforms such as setting in an insolvency and bankruptcy code, which has removed the stigma of failure and also has instituted certain credit discipline among the corporate borrowers. Because some of you may recall that the second decade for India was a decade where corporate and bank balance sheets had to be repaired because of the unsustainable boom that happened between 2006 and 2012. So insolvency and bankruptcy code, the single national indirect tax, the goods and services tax, and then towards the end of the decade, and then catalyzed by the pandemic, the public digital infrastructure. So all of these things, I think, post-COVID have enhanced the ability of the Indian economy to sustain high growth while bringing down the average inflation rate from an average of about 7% for the first seven decades since independence to something like between 4.5% and 5.5% on average. In fact, in 2022, the test of India's supply-side enhancement came when, in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, global inflation rates in the developed world spiked to double digits in some cases, high single digits in some cases, but India's inflation rate peaked at 7.8%.

So the combination of supply-side enhancement and continued process reforms, such as deregulation, particularly in subnational governments, has contributed to this good combination of sustained high growth, declining inflation rate which is slowly converging towards the developed country averages, and also fiscal prudence and conservatism have played a part in creating this post-COVID growth record. I'll just end my remarks with two points. William McNeill of the University of Chicago, a historian, wrote in his book 'Plagues and Peoples' that pandemics are important structural breaks, and I think this one is proving to be no exception. And the presentation made by Krishna and the book also mentions fragmentation as an important risk factor. That is as euphemistic as one can get. I would slightly make it plainer, even though I'm also going to be using a fairly euphemistic phrase: geopolitical contestation is going to be the defining feature of the 21st century, and some of the ability of Asia to overcome its challenges and continue to grow will depend on how Asia is able to manage this phase of geopolitical contestation. I know that multilateral institutions have certain limitations in stating it very openly, but I think we are missing the elephant in the room if we don't acknowledge that the scramble for resources and the geopolitical contestation will leave Asia in a more challenging situation than what we have been able to say we have achieved between 1960 and 2019.