Ananya Huria & Prof. Juliet Lu
At the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, Prime Minister Carney shined a spotlight on what many have been reluctant to say out loud: the rules-based international order is broken, and “we are in the midst of a rupture.” Old dividing lines of the West versus the rest, developed versus developing, global north versus the global south, and democracy versus dictatorship are being redrawn, and the familiar map of political alliances, trade ties, and shared ethical norms is gone. In this moment of global disruption, where should we look to understand and shape what comes next? Experts speaking at UBC last month suggest we look to the Indo-Pacific.
On March 12, 2026, the UBC Institute of Asian Research (IAR), in partnership with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, hosted a series of discussions shedding light on these questions at the 2026 IAR Indo-Pacific Symposium in Vancouver. More than 100 researchers, students, and policy professionals, including representatives from Global Affairs Canada, the Privy Council Office, and IDRC, spent an afternoon examining the forces reshaping Asia’s political, economic, and technological landscapes, and how university-hosted engagements can provide clarity and a platform for coalition-building in a moment of polarization and instability. Jeff Nankivell, President and CEO of APF Canada, set the tone: moments of disruption demand more nuanced thinking, and in the Indo-Pacific, he argued, each country demands to be seen as for its unique contributions, and as a regionally networked power. Panelists debated what might emerge from this rupture and, while most agreed that future directions remain uncertain, they outlined key questions and arenas for engagement Canada cannot afford to ignore.
The Indo-Pacific Region: the new battleground?
Multiple speakers called for engaging the Indo-Pacific as a collection of distinct cultures and communities, each navigating the current moment on its own terms. In the world of infrastructure, but also across other sectors and political issues, “today’s geopolitics is less about territory and more about shaping and governing the transnational networks and nodes” suggests Jessica DiCarlo. Nowhere is this more visible than in Southeast Asia’s relationship with China, which was the focus of the opening roundtable. The region shows how old understandings of transnational connection are obsolete and new alliances will have to defy nation-state borders.
“Today’s geopolitics is less about territory and more about shaping and governing the transnational networks and nodes”
Southeast Asia is one of the fastest developing regions in the world, and is deeply economically integrated with China, while also skeptical of its growing power. Conventional wisdom says that most nations in the region (and the world) resist having to ‘choose’ between the US and China, but ‘a recent study of ‘choice alignment’ nevertheless charts a tacit and subtle shift in alignments of countries away from Washington and toward Beijing (Khong & Liow 2025). Lynette Ong remarked that many Southeast Asian states have adopted a strategy of separating economic engagement from political alignment, trading heavily with China while maintaining security relationships with the United States. She suggested that Canada too should learn to “walk and chew gum at the same time” or to separate economic engagement from political alignment, echoing Carney’s calls for being “both principled and pragmatic”.
Others used examples from Southeast Asia to contrast the US and Canada’s tendency to look to multilateral engagements with China’s preference for bilateral relationships over multilateral frameworks. Canada is already turning toward this strategy, its main strength and drawback being that it allows a country to approach others and form partnerships individually rather than engaging or having to hold together a coordinated front. Jeff Wasserstrom urged Canada and other global North powers to navigate the region using multiple analytical maps that show overlapping economic ties, security dynamics, and cultural connections in the Indo-Pacific.
“It's almost impossible to talk about diplomacy without talking about diaspora,”
Taomo Zhou pushed the analysis further, to the invisible borders that shape modern diplomacy: diaspora communities. “It’s almost impossible to talk about diplomacy without talking about diaspora,” she observed. Transnational communities—Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, Sikh communities in Canada, Iranian communities in Vancouver—are not simply cultural bridges. They are political actors, intimately tied to their origin countries but often representing specific interests that may contrast national stances or domestic norms. Nevertheless, these communities are an under-utilized resource for reshaping bilateral relationships from the bottom-up in ways that formal diplomatic channels struggle to manage. In an era of rising ethno-nationalism, Zhou warned, diaspora networks that once facilitated globalization are increasingly framed as security threats, and citizenship alone no longer guarantees protection when political loyalty is conflated with ethnicity.
What is the future for values and rules?
A consequential debate over the merits of democracy versus autocracy points to new ideological fault lines. Elvin Ong, who studies opposition politics across Asia at National University of Singapore, was blunt: it is now significantly harder to sell democracy than autocracy, and attitudes are shifting from the ground up. “How do political leaders persuade citizens that democracy offers stability rather than chaos?” he asked. Forty years ago, democracy was associated with freedom and hope. Today, for many in Asia, it is associated with disorder and authoritarian systems with technological progress and effective governance. Reform in formal political systems alone will not shift the average citizen’s views; grassroots outreach is as if not far more important. When his students in Singapore compare democratic and authoritarian systems, they don’t look to the state or reach for abstract principles. They recount images: American homelessness versus Chinese high-speed rail; Westminster gridlock versus Singapore efficiency.
Civil society is trying to respond, but the terrain is difficult. Meredith Weiss, pointed to the hollowing out of protest across Southeast Asia: rising economic precarity, declining institutional trust, and social media activism that prioritizes visibility over sustained political engagement. In Myanmar, prolonged violent suppression has limited the impact of nonviolent resistance. In Indonesia and the Philippines, AI-powered disinformation campaigns now run like marketing agencies. One response is to engage with fellow activists beyond their backyard: the Milk Tea Alliance, for example, connects movements from Myanmar to Hong Kong to Taiwan and Thailand. The repressors of those protests, too, are finding transnational inspiration in strategies such as ‘charge stacking’ to lengthen court sentences, explained Jeff Wasserstrom. The playing field on both sides is transnational and in flux.
And yet, Weiss ended on a note worth holding onto: mass anti-authoritarian protest has created unprecedented public visibility for LGBTQ communities, women, and youth movements across the region. The activist in Southeast Asia can no longer be presumed male or straight. They are most likely young, quite likely students with a whole life of activism ahead of them. The grievances driving activism are real and growing, they will not simply disappear.
Into this already unsettled debate, add artificial intelligence and the picture grows more urgent. Merlyna Lim, Carleton University, offered perhaps the sharpest framing of the afternoon: what governments across Asia are building is not digital infrastructure but “synthetic political infrastructure” where AI, data, and code are used not just to concentrate power, but to lock it in. The deeper question, Lim argued, is not whether states regulate AI, but whose values the systems they build actually encode. “Technological exclusion”, she observed, “is just faster bureaucratic exclusion”.
Is Canada ready to walk and chew gum at the same time?
For Canada, the symposium raised a pointed question: as it seeks to deepen engagement with the Indo-Pacific, does it have the regional fluency, resources, and vision to do so on its own terms?
Canada has pitched itself to Asia primarily as an energy and resource provider, but trade alone is not a complete offer, plus policy tools can only go so far in growing trade ties. The Indo-Pacific region seeks technology cooperation, transnational digital governance collaboration, and sustained diplomatic partnerships alongside trade. The Canadian private sector has been slow to step through doors opened by diplomacy, and may require a deeper people-to-people ties to go further. Diplomatic ruptures with China and India have not helped, and should point to the need for more nuanced engagement with diaspora networks. In Canada and in Indo-Pacific countries alike, diaspora communities are regarded both as potential bridges and potential security risks, but too often the conflation of ethnicity with political loyalty blinds us to more productive approaches.
The symposium did not provide a clear answer to what does the next world order looks like, but perhaps that is the point. What we do see are early signals in the region: democracy versus autocracy binary is being tested, protest movements and their repressors are rewriting the rules of society-state engagement, and the middle powers are demonstrating that strategic autonomy is achievable even amidst great power competition. In moments of hegemonic shift like this, when one order is crumbling and the next is yet undefined, certain areas of contention and dynamism take on a special momentum in driving change. The symposium gathered precisely to take those areas seriously, to name them clearly and explore them carefully. In a period of rupture, that kind of sharp, regionally grounded thinking is not just academic. For Canada, it may be a strategic necessity.
