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This concluding chapter summarizes the book’s conceptual framework with regard to China’s economic integration with select LAC countries since 2000. The author disputes realist interpretations of China’s rise in Latin America as a security threat to US hegemony and argues that China needed to internationalize its development strategy to compensate for its natural resource deficit. China’s ten LAC strategic partners now represent the majority of trade, loans, and FDI outflows from China to Latin America, and China is now the second-most-important trade partner for the region after the US. This relationship is contributing to the development of select LAC countries in order to propel China’s own growth and development. The author then moves to the political economy scenarios that have evolved within those LAC countries that have the strongest trade links and FDI inflows from China, in order to dispute the critique of neo-dependency scholars before offering the main takeaways.

Southeast Asia has achieved impressive economic performance over the years, which positions it well for future economic and social progress. The two largest economies in the world—the United States and China—have recognized the enormous economic and strategic potential of Southeast Asia and have made the region a core element in their regional and global plans. At the same time, Southeast Asia is confronting many challenges that could derail its continued rapid economic and institutional development. Some of these challenges emanate from outside the region, such as the region’s vulnerability to global economic instability, while other challenges come from within. Political, ethnic, and communal tensions threaten stability and development in some countries. This chapter first examines the factors behind Southeast Asia’s long-term economic progress and the development of a regional institutional structure that has helped make this progress resilient over several decades. It then examines the economic outlook for the region and assesses the important risks that could slow—or even disrupt—its continued rapid and resilient growth.

This chapter demonstrates how the complex patchwork of overlapping institutions in Asia is largely a product of historical institutional processes. Between bilateralism and multilateralism, a variety of mini-laterals, preferential trade agreements, and track II dialogues have grown to become an important part of the institutional landscape. Policy makers turned to these additional informal outlets to advance regional economic and security goals. The chapter describes US alliance relationships with Australia and the Philippines during the period of the US pivot to Asia, as well as the growth of new security partnerships with Singapore and Vietnam. It also explores trilateral relations and the rise of multilateral trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

Neo-Marxist approaches have begun again to exercise influence in contemporary critiques of globalization. This chapter sketches a transnational and national class-based analysis of international trade-regulatory agreements, using the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as the representative ideal type. With this framework, it looks at the implications of the TPP model for developing countries in the area of foreign investment and intellectual property rights in the matrix of the recent evolution of these two regimes. It further examines strategies available to the United States and India as their different domestic class constellations struggle over the countries’ political positioning towards economic globalization.

This chapter examines the extent to which mega-regional agreements constitute new orientations for EU external relations. It focuses on CETA, TTIP, and TiSA, which are the most important instruments in the context of mega-regional initiatives from the viewpoint of the EU, placing them, however, in the broader context of other mega-regional initiatives such as TPP and the RCEP. This chapter explains the main motivations underlying the worldwide move to regional agreements in the course of the last ten to fifteen years and expounds the main functions of mega-regional agreements. Furthermore, it sketches out the principal (geo-)political implications of today’s prime mega-regional projects. Finally, this introductory chapter argues that the reorientation attempted with these initiatives calls for a re-evaluation in view of the problematic experiences made during the negotiations on CETA and TTIP, in particular.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a sixteen country trade grouping slated to become the largest free trade area in the world, is emerging as one of India’s primary opportunities for increasing connectivity to East and Southeast Asia. Not only does this offer Indian producers access to a large Asian market but also the possibility of joining global value chains that would potentially increase trade with the rest of the world. Identifying India’s defensive and aggressive interests in agriculture and food processing, this chapter argues that Indian policymakers need to address domestic infrastructural deficits and policy reform bottlenecks if India is to fully exploit its opportunities from its trade connectivity with the east. They also need to re-examine the defensive interests, focus on export interests and place the conversation within the context of India’s overall interest in economic development and job creation.

The chapter analyses China’s FTA approach to investment in terms of malleability, and its implications for the RCEP. The following questions are discussed: what is the trend of China’s FTA approach to investment concerning malleability? Is China a rule follower, shaker, or maker? How may China’s approach the RCEP regarding investment? The chapter demonstrates, firstly, that China is willing to substantially improve rules and embrace newer style investment stipulations. The ChAFTA contains innovative safeguards of regulatory autonomy and ISDS procedural features (including the roster of arbitration panellists, the public welfare notice, the code of conduct for arbitrators, and the joint interpretation of the annex by treaty parties). Secondly, China will probably be a rule shaker in the short to medium term, and possibly becomes a rule-maker in the long term. Its approach may evolve from selective adaption to targeted innovation. The reason is plain as China will be increasingly active in the development of investment norms due to the need to protect its outbound investment and enhance investor confidence in inbound investment. As a rule-shaker in the RCEP negotiations, China will often modify proposals of partners rather than offer a new set of clauses. Given various factors (including the unique nature of mega FTA, ‘stockpile’ of existing investment agreements, and China’s approach to the ASEAN), China may take a more flexible stance in the RCEP than in bilateral FTAs. The RCEP will affect the shaping of China’s FTA approach to investment.

Many similarities and occasional differences are evident concerning the current approaches of Australia and New Zealand towards investment treaties, including the now politically sensitive issue of investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS). This chapter considers the potential of these two closely integrated countries to influence the future design of investment treaties in the Asia Pacific region, including for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP or ‘ASEAN+6’ agreement) – the negotiations for which include China. The chapter compares key areas of existing treaties already signed by Australia and New Zealand, as well as apparent positions set out by them in a leaked draft RCEP investment chapter. Given the concerns about US–style treaty drafting displayed recently by Indonesia and India, major economies still negotiating RCEP with Australia and New Zealand (as well as bilateral agreements with the former), the chapter also considers the scope for Australia and New Zealand to promote more pro-state provisions regarding both substantive commitments and procedures such as ISDS, which characterize contemporary preferences of the European Union. The chapter concludes that a transition to a new generation of treaties is likely not only given the evolving preferences of counterparties and local politics, but also because of various policy arguments for dialing back treaty commitments to foreign investors—albeit without eschewing them altogether.