Against a backdrop of trade tensions, supply chain disruptions, and rapid digital change, experts examined how APEC China 2026 is shaping Asia Pacific’s policy agenda.

Economic interdependence was once expected to guarantee peace. It now fuels resentment

Expert urges caution when turbulence is mistaken for transformation

Henry Kissinger, the late US secretary of state, once reportedly remarked that “to be an enemy of America would be dangerous, to be a friend would be fatal”. That observation, while made in the context of America’s allies in the Vietnam War, has gained fresh resonance at the recently concluded Munich Security Conference, where current Secretary of State Marco Rubio artfully delivered a message that was, to all intents and purposes, an iron fist in a velvet glove.