now do stay with us for peter lavelle's cross talk. if. you. can to. hello and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle forward to blot of our stock on the eve of the meeting of the asia pacific economic cooperation regional group to what degree is the global economy now centered in the east and south are we living in the pacific century and if we are what does it really mean. anything.

to cross-talk the apec group i'm joined by and lee in new york she's an adjunct professor at new york university and author of what the u.s. can learn from china in cambridge we have william overhauled he is a senior research fellow with the ash center for democratic governance and innovation at harvard's kennedy school and here in the studio with me is the of on as easy as a professor of economics at cornell university right cross talk rose in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and only one of us stuck in the end why should people know something about this why is it important it's important for a number of reasons. well and this is an organization that has been growing and clout. and it is a sum it was a number of asian countries represented and many americans are not aware of this and with more and more activity going on in asia pacific and as you were posing a question is it the pacific century and i would say yes because you know the pacific

region is growing in wealth and whenever you have growing wealthy a growing influence and power and you're going to start to see more as these countries join the world making classes and this is going to create changes throughout the world ok. in cambridge are we going into the pacific century you know these are right countries represented. well you know. we we've been in. the half century asian dynamism. for the last half century and clearly. japan and. china and. indonesia have become much more important during this period and they they do join they were. the ruling class as it were. i think it's i

think it's important to distinguish that from the idea that that power is shifting completely across the pacific we we actually don't know whether that's going to happen. when i was starting my career. americans were paranoid about japan taking over the world and. now japan as one of the biggest problems in the world economy china may continue its venom is a more it may become another japan. the us may. decline because it doesn't invest in infrastructure and education or it may continue to be the center of innovation and economic dynamism so it's a pacific century it's not clear at all clear what the waiting across the pacific will be ok and what do you think the weighting will be i mean is it is it going to be as a lot of people say this is china's club ok let's be fair it's china's club well

one bit to look at is the following it be just look at what happened in the last four years you know what we did there was the global financial crisis since the lehman collapsed and just imagine suppose the asian countries especially the members of the asian members of the pack. it's not doing like what they are doing now in terms of economic performance i think the global economic growth is close to zero now now the fact is now that you know you're going to grow because of apac country exactly exactly now with the global economy grow these three point five percent so it's of course it's not high but it's not too bad that's why some people report five is a lot for a lot of countries right now exactly in fact some people even question the technology of global crisis because many people now using the global economic crisis but how do you call global economic crisis when the economy in the world is growing by two point five percent but the entity is precisely because of pull out

by the asian members of the pack so from that standpoint i think i fully believe it and built in themselves the you know the importance of apec as the organization and if i go back to it's growing importance because the european union is going down the trains i mean it is that one of the reasons why it's growing in importance. well you're telling me very very angry man i was sara way down the drain where. well china actually has indicated their support of the european union. obviously merkel has been meeting with chinese leadership over there and they have announced new deals to invest in each other's countries china has said that they will continue to buy euro bonds. buying jet airplanes and whatnot i think

that they recognize that. the world economy can't afford for the eurozone to disintegrate and so i think that china will play a role in trying to maintain a stable world order. whether the growth rates will continue to stagnate or or rebalance down the road remains to be seen. but i think that what we're seeing is that the global economy is extremely integrated it's really impossible to isolate them at this point and in regards to the asia pacific you may call the china club but frankly it's the asia club because all these countries have companies that have such enormous investments in each other's countries that the. asian go but there are countries in

the western hemisphere that any also you're saying they're not going to play much role absolutely this is why i'm saying that though the world is very integrated to try to isolate them and say well is it's just the asia pacific region or the european region or the americas it's really not quite fair because china has joined this small group of nations that has interests throughout the world and therefore. it is like the united states in that way where it you know cannot say that they can ignore other parts of the world well i mean i'm ignoring oh i don't really point out something to bill i mean russia is looking more to the east now because of the problems in the european union. i think the importance of this apec meeting is that it's it's the debut of russia's president which we're trying like america's pivot to asia is real russia is making

huge investments in. port facilities where where. there won't be ice all winter. it's building roads and railroads and making a huge commitment and. a lot of us talk so much. we'll show this off. very little else we'll be accomplished at the summit but this this is very important and will consequences but what do you think about that because you know russia's turnover and effectuate is about one point five percent of our total i guess small yes minuscule yeah well i mean ok another way to look at it and i want to follow up with and mentioned earlier yes the world is getting more and more into dependent and interconnected. that can be positive but

it can also be negative now the positive part of it is that as we have opposite of in the last decade or saw the world economy is relatively healthy until the lehman collapsed in the fall of two thousand and eight so it's all because of the sort of open and market based kind of an economy and support many countries are doing and going through the trade liberalization and so what that helps the world economy but when you are more interconnected when you are more in the dependent if one or two members contagion contagion i'm talking with contagion and it is happening now in fact two days or i'm sorry i suppose not to say i may or may have a finance finance minister meeting i'm intending here and the tone is pretty clear that the. the world economy is not in a good ship at this moment now the question here is that to what extent that will affect it back members especially the asian members because we all know that. doing

relatively well compared to the rest of the world that's way now the world is experiencing what is called the double track growth in wits the growth in the industrial countries has been slowing down but the growth in asian countries are relatively strong so the question here is that will the contagion of what happened in europe for example and also in the us to some extend the soaring down of the u.s. economy could affect the asian members of the it that the answer is yes. and at least there are two channels of contagions one is the what they call the real sector channel to trade and this happens especially in export oriented asian economies like china you know malaysia thailand and so forth you can see immediately their export drop because the. prime markets for these economies are the g two i.e. euro eurozone areas as well as in the u.s.

so when your prime markets are in trouble like what we are observing now naturally your ego export is also affected and then your economy is affected. the second channel is financial channel and it is happening quite quite significantly now if you look at the actually in state in many of the asian countries now it's so full of title because of the deal leveraging off many banking sectors in in europe and so what so what i'm trying to say here is that as the world economy is getting more and more interdependent and interconnected then many policymakers in all countries has to be more aware in themselves their contagion the risks of the contagion and from that standpoint i think russia is realizing that the connection with asia is getting more and more important especially in the coming years and this is the reasons why they put special in serious effort in themselves the more integrated with the east asian parts of the world to go with the winners are saying well you

know but also as i said earlier they have to be aware of the potential can teach it or i'm going to jump in here folks we're going to go to a short break and after that chopper it'll continue our discussion expat are. still. looking for. their childhood was on her shadow by this tragedy. the still seen here they. don't remember every second of the slightness. remain in their memories and hearts forever. and you see you saw.

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care only. talking about the asia pacific economic cooperation. ok good and i'd like to go back to you in new york we looked we've talked about interdependence here and i think we all agree with that but there's a lot of conflicts within apec itself a lot of the countries you know can we look at china we look at japan korea philippines exception ok how are they going to work this out or can apec help. well this is definitely a tricky situation because these countries have historically lots of tensions from

past wars colonial behavior. has caused deep resentment and these countries need to figure out how to put that aside and realize need to move forward the way that the european countries were able to put aside their differences and join and create the eurozone this is obviously a challenging matter as many diplomats will understand but with deeper economic ties that's certainly one way to begin conversations and and then they need to understand that they would be much stronger and they would all benefit if they can hang together as opposed to hanging apart which the european nations understand ok . what about that i mean is this organization going to help alleviate those differences the very real differences in their flaring up right now. well i think

the economic ties do help and the conversations do help but the fundamental problem is. governments that are weak domestically and therefore. are taking nationalistic actions and are unwilling to step on. local governments and citizen groups that that exacerbate conflict you've got a very weak government in japan and they're always afraid of of. being the latest prime minister to go they've had six in five years and. people are always looking. for a way to reassert. japanese. leadership and national identity and. the right wing has been successful in.

pushing some of these nationalistic actions governor ishihara for instance wanting to privatized the the same caucus. new a new foreign minister from the democratic party of japan breaking the agreement since nine hundred seventy eight that they would not arrest chinese fishing boat captains they would just chase them out. a weak. leadership before the transition and south korea. wanting to. strengthen itself at home by having the president. talk to question while and that's just viewed with japan. and in china a government which when it was strong when leaders were strong settled twelve to

fourteen land border disputes to the satisfaction of its neighbors but lately facing a transition wanting to get. its factions key people into place for next year. has given in to statements by a local general and so on what do you think about that well financed business trump politics is built was talking about i mean what's the or is there a ratio you see. yes look at what happened in the past yes usually the economical pretty she's helped sort of the gate what if it but if you're getting worse now not better well yeah that exactly what i'm saying i don't know what that will be the end outcome but in the meantime i think. politicians and as well as policymakers in the regions realize that do we need to go east by

strengthening the economy called pretty but what is also important is that. apec is the one example of the economy corporations at the end of the day is clearly the national policy so i fully agree with bill at the end of the day is to do the individual can but you're always late earlier if this is an opportunity as well you know they're going to miss this opportunity for greater integration no i don't think so i think they realize today is very clear all the finance minister of the twenty one countries confirm that they need to even crease and to strengthen the economy corporations now that doesn't mean that all the types of conflicts will go away no but in the meantime while they are trying to do all kinds of means the economic operations will be strengthened because they believe that will help ok and if i can go back to you i mean one of the things we haven't talked about here is the america's role in all of this and it is in the organization and there will be a lot of countries all say well we want the americans there because they can mediate these differences ok because there's

a lot of allies in this organization with the americans i mean is that one of the reasons why they have a little bit more comfort because you know when you look at these conflicts the united states has its navy. it depends some would argue that america's drawing gas on the fire and it's fueling more conflict. because if you look at china's stance they would say america is almost encouraging japan's bad behavior in some of these island disputes because japan feels that the u.s. will come to the rescue no matter what they do and so so it depends it's i would say it depends on who you ask whether america's. involvement is beneficial or not. but i would say. it's clear

that the u.s. . wants to be involved it's clear that it actually benefits cus if there is tension because. when they play countries against each other it's acts as a destabilizing. acts as a destabilizing force so that no one area will be able to challenge the u.s. and therefore u.s. can remain the superpower when all these conflicts happen in other parts of the world and u.s. is lucky in that it is completely buffeted by two large oceans and has you know very friendly relations with its two neighbors canon mexico and so this way. you know if there is conflict in the asia pacific this will enable us to maintain its leadership position for a very long time if if the asian countries can't work out their differences can't

work out their differences and we will continue to see american hegemony in the pacific do you agree or disagree with that statement. i agree that it's work what's happened is that the. countries on china's perforate have basically align themselves more with the u.s. because of these conflicts that i also want to agree with and that. let me put it a slip just a slight the same things i laid different way the american narrative that all these problems are caused by the rise of china and by. chinese assertiveness. is is worsening the conflict and not helping it china is overreaching but japan is overreaching and and the philippines and vietnam are overreaching and

by a by a not playing a referee's role instead by saying one side is always right and the other side is always wrong the us. polarizing the region and then there are in the long run that's not even helpful to two u.s. interests in the us will be better off if if. if these kind of conflicts are. reduced because the risks of increased polarization are. are just too great a clash is possible any time and. the whole virtuous circle of trade benefits and diplomatic convergence can can reverse very quickly if i want to think about that yeah one example in the

economic area especially in detroit area is the idea of the p.p.p. transpacific partnership beats what the u.s. i.d.'s in business one we are some people say a trojan horse to. see. if it ok let's think about this week. an ideal scenario would be p.p.p. it's not an exclusive kind of sort of corporations but more inclusive meaning that the more members is the better now as it is now unfortunately p.p.p. is still seen as an exclusive because. there are some members and one of that some members are really the second largest economy in the world i.e. china is not really a member of it and looking at the conditions and the substance that has been put in the d.p.p. it's unlikely very unlikely that a country like china will join the world mean anything of trying to doesn't jolly

well let me join in well it's just just imagine a club great club ok the world supposed to be the world trade club but the second largest economy in the world is not a member of it of course it can it can be there but. it's less meaningful put it that way look at it and if i go back here in new york where is your crystal ball here ten years from now well everybody you know with a packers everyone knows that opec is ten years from now what about apec. well i think it depends on on the members and was are. they choose to make it an important organization or not. institutions are are really driven by people and it depends on if the leaders that make up apec choose to create you know proactive productive change with their organisation and use it as a way to help resolve conflicts as

a way to increase corporation or they are just using as a way to just represent their own national interest and it probably won't really like yours and i wonder if and when i was there i didn't know what it is it's all about leadership many thanks to my guest today in new york in cambridge and here in the studio and thanks to our viewers for watching us here to see you next time and remember ross talk. to me.

two of the world's largest on these days of india and china unveil plans towards mall close speed giving western countries on the edge with a growing influence in the pacific. moscow threatens london with the diplomatic

repercussions or because firms that it's moved to ban dozens of russian officials from entering the u.k. every day let alone in the uk not seen cases where top lawyer died in custody. and of the long arm of the copyright industry reaches all the way to kumble with one of the future fund result of pirate bay file sharing site now facing extradition to sweden. it's eight pm here in moscow you're watching r t live with me to be on with say first the one time regional rivals india and china now want to bring they are music closer together beijing's top military chief is on a visit to new delhi aiming to boost the influence of the two asian giants but news of this alliance is already causing concern across the pacific as our teams

pre-history to experience.