Future Leaders Programme 11: New Development Strategies for ASEAN in a “New” World

Development Leadership Dialogue (DLD) at SOAS University of London, co-directed by Ha-Joon Chang, Christopher Cramer, and Jonathan Di John, announces its 11th Future Leaders Programme (FLP) on ‘New Development Strategies for ASEAN in a “New” World,’ to be co-hosted with Khazanah Research Institute (KRI).

This time, DLD is organising our 11th FLP with Khazanah Research Institute (KRI), which is related to Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, and is a leading research institute on issues to do with economic and social development in Malaysia and beyond.

About the Future Leaders Programme (FLP)

DLD promotes dialogue and mutual learning between the key actors that drive economic and social development – governments, private firms, civil society organizations, international organizations, trade unions, academia, and others – and that often operate in separate spheres, understanding each other poorly, even seeing each other as adversaries.

The FLP is one of the key programmes of DLD, bringing together a small number of people who will be in leadership positions in the next five to ten years in different sectors of the development community for a workshop of lectures, discussion sessions, and debates, led by speakers with a wealth of senior experience in government, international organizations, and academia.

New Development Strategies for ASEAN in a “New” World

The world is in turmoil. Climate and other ecological crises are deepening and fast approaching the point of no return. Countries in the Global South are disproportionately suffering from their consequences, despite having contributed very little to the crises.

There is a tectonic shift in global economic and political balances of power, with the rise of China and with increasing collaboration among the countries in the Global South. In response, the rich countries have been disengaging from the neo-liberal global governance system that they had forced upon the Global South since the 1980s. The Trump administration’s ‘trade war against everyone’ is the only latest – and the most absurd – attempt by the US and the European countries to turn the clock back.

In this turbulent world, ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) countries are in a particularly complicated position. ASEAN is arguably the most dynamic part of the world economy, outside China, but most of its members still have not made the structural transformation that is needed for sustainable prosperity. In the last few decades, ASEAN has benefited from being close to both China and the US in economic terms, but the growing conflicts between the two giants is pulling ASEAN countries into different directions. While ASEAN countries may become main beneficiaries of ‘friend-shoring’ by US corporations, Donald Trump’s ‘reciprocal’ tariffs, if they come into full force, will hit ASEAN countries particularly hard.

ASEAN is also a key region in the global management of climate crisis, being in possession of vast areas of rainforest that is one of the three main ‘lungs’ of the earth (with the Amazon and the Congo Basin) and some of the minerals and rare earth elements (REEs) that are critical for energy transition (especially nickel in Indonesia and REEs in Vietnam and Myanmar).

In this workshop, we want to gather the ‘future leaders’ from different sectors – governments, the corporate sector, civil society, international organizations, trade unions, etc – of ASEAN countries, to engage in collective learning and debates regarding how ASEAN countries should re-calibrate their long-term development strategies in this turbulent ‘new’ world.

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