According to the IMF, the Indo-Pacific will account for 50% of wealth creation in 2050. France, Patrice Geoffron hopes, could play the role of a balancing power, modest no doubt, certainly useful.
On 25 January, the third Singapore Economic Meetings will open, at the initiative of the Cercle des économistes and in partnership with Insead, in the heart of the Indo-Pacific region. This event allows us to appreciate the progress of the world since the previous edition, in 2019, both geopolitically and economically. And to remember that health threats were not in the picture then, a few months before the quasi-global lockdown…
And let’s not forget the increase in climate issues since then: the ability to make a transition away from the fossil world – according to the timid perspective outlined by COP 28 – will be played out very largely in this vast space where coal remains anchored in energy models and which includes the island nations most at risk.
The Indo-Pacific
Indo-Pacific: what are we talking about? Although the term appeared in thenineteenth century to mark the density of trade and cultural flows between the two oceans, it was only reintroduced in 2007 by Shinzo Abe, the Japanese Prime Minister.
The latter affirms the importance of this space in the dynamics of globalization. This is a way of underlining that the course of the world was not limited to a shift between the Atlantic and the Pacific, at the risk of obscuring India and its ocean. Since then, all the world’s powers have developed an Indo-Pacific strategy, with France even making it one of the axes of its presidency of the Council of the EU in 2022.
Even though this vast space is highly heterogeneous, more than 60% of trade is intra-regional and, according to the IMF, its GDP will account for 50% of global wealth creation in 2040. And, a subject of attention, the Indo-Pacific is dense in the production of minerals and key components in the digital transitions (mobile telephony, data storage, artificial intelligence, etc.), as well as energy (electric vehicles, batteries, photovoltaic panels, etc.).
View of Europe
Seen from Europe, these new dependencies are even more a subject of vigilance, given the region’s deficit in terms of security architecture: tensions in the China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, the Korean peninsula, and the Sino-Indian border in the Himalayas are all bright orange flashing lights. Not to mention the neo-Cold War between China and the United States, which is waiting for Donald Trump’s re-election to regain intensity.
To be sure, a regional comprehensive economic partnership (RCEP) came into force at the beginning of this decade, bringing together some fifteen economies in the region (including China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand) and forming the largest free trade area in the world. But without India, which has distanced itself from China by joining the IPEF (Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity) initiated by Joe Biden.
These tectonic shifts must keep an alert Europe whose energy is absorbed by the conflict in Ukraine and the threats induced by Middle Eastern hotbeds. For France, it is a question of exploiting its Indo-Pacific anchorage, which represents more than 90% of the French exclusive economic zone and hosts the activities of more than 7,000 subsidiaries of companies established, particularly in areas essential to the sustainable modernization of the countries of this vast area, such as infrastructure, waste management, etc.
In an area without an epicenter, France can play, beyond these economic considerations, the role of a balancing power, modest no doubt, certainly useful.
