Lecture 7
ASEAN and the Global South as a New Policy Space — Leapfrogging Beyond Bretton Woods

(1) Introduction to the lecture

Norie KAWAHARA opened the seventh lecture of the Spring 2026 semester of the Surviving Cancer in Asia: Cross-boundary Cancer Studies lecture series by placing cancer prevention within a larger question about the kind of society Asia will build in the coming decades. To discuss prevention is also to ask who is protected, who is left behind, and who is invested in for the future; in that sense, cancer prevention is a question about the social contract of Asia itself.

Dr. Kawahara introduced Professor Hidetoshi Nishimura as a speaker who has long considered how ASEAN centrality can be supported and how Japan can cooperate with ASEAN without weakening its autonomy, in a socio-economic cooperation grounded in mutual trust and heart-to-heart diplomacy, in which health and well-being are part of the substance of cooperation that supports ASEAN centricity.

(2) ASEAN and the Global South as a New Policy Space — Leapfrogging Beyond Bretton Woods

Hidetoshi NISHIMURA opened by explaining that his remarks would draw on nearly fifty years of experience of the international economic order under the Bretton Woods system, from his entry into Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry in 1975 and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) Tokyo Round (1973-79), through more than three decades of cooperation with ASEAN, to the establishment of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) as an East Asian counterpart to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). He noted that the lecture would pose nine questions intended to help students develop their own perspectives on the Global South and the changing international order. The questions are intended not as examination questions, but as intellectual challenges—no-one possesses a definitive answer.  

Why the Global South Now?

Between 2022 and 2025 the G20 presidency was held in succession by Indonesia, India, Brazil, and South Africa, which was more than a simple rotation of host countries. The postwar international order rested on the Bretton Woods system, but in the twenty-first century the center of gravity of the world economy has steadily shifted. Countries once described as the “South” are no longer merely recipients of assistance but increasingly active participants in shaping international rules and institutions. Prof. Nishimura noted that the lecture would  examine this transformation through the lens of the Global South as a new policy space.

Where Does the Global South Come From?

The term “Global South” is widely used yet remains imprecise. The more fruitful question is not which countries belong to it but where the idea came from. Its intellectual origins lie in the 1955 Bandung Conference, where Asian and African countries sought an independent position subordinate to neither Western nor Soviet bloc — a political aspiration that may be described as a Third Force. What proved more important in the longer term was South–South Cooperation, a development philosophy that extended this agency into the sphere of economic growth and recognized development as a process of multiple pathways shaped by each country’s history, culture, and institutions.

Under the subsequent North–South framework, the OECD-Development Assistance Committee (DAC)-centered regime promoted industrialization through assistance, technical cooperation, and infrastructure investment. ASEAN, however, while drawing on cooperation from Japan and other advanced economies, preserved the principles of South–South Cooperation, treating North–South and South–South cooperation as complementary rather than contradictory. The Global South can therefore be understood today as the contemporary expression of South–South Cooperation under new historical conditions — a new policy space that seeks common development through connectivity while recognizing diverse pathways.

Why Is Bretton Woods Outgrowing Its Own Success?

The Bretton Woods system, supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the GATT, and later the World Trade Organization (WTO), was one of the most successful development frameworks in modern history. Yet its very success created a new reality. Many countries once regarded as recipients of assistance have become major economic actors: India is now the world’s most populous country, ASEAN one of the world’s leading production hubs, and Brazil and South Africa key regional powers. The traditional distinction between those who teach development and those who learn it is becoming obsolete, and the world is moving from the G7 era toward a more pluralistic G20 era.

Why Is the Global South Reshaping the International Order?

The significance of the G20 succession lies not in the rotation itself but in the fact that all four Global South host countries are seeking to adapt the existing international order to new realities. They do not seek to reject the Bretton Woods system but to preserve its achievements while adjusting them to the realities of a changing world. This is the distinctive characteristic of the Global South: not a project of rejection but an effort to carry forward what has been built.

Why Is ASEAN Different?

Within this transformation ASEAN occupies a special position as a global laboratory for managing diversity while pursuing integration. Unlike the European Union, which has emphasized convergence, ASEAN has developed on the basis of diversity, with highly developed economies such as Singapore coexisting within the same framework as late-developing members such as Laos and Cambodia, and combining rather than counterposing North–South and South–South cooperation. This achievement reflects what may be described as Path Diversity: different countries follow different development paths while participating in a common framework of cooperation — a principle that differs fundamentally from conventional theories assuming a single path toward modernization.

What Does Leapfrogging Really Mean?

Leapfrogging is often described as the ability of latecomers to skip stages of development, but its significance goes beyond technology. Under the Bretton Woods paradigm, development was understood as a sequential process: countries built infrastructure, developed manufacturing, and gradually moved toward knowledge-intensive activities. Today this sequence is changing. Mobile communications expand without extensive fixed-line networks; digital finance grows without large physical banking infrastructures; and artificial intelligence is accelerating these trends. The significance of Leapfrogging therefore lies not in skipping stages but in transforming the sequence of development itself, namely the mechanism through which digitalization enables Path Diversity in the twenty-first century.

What Is the New Normal?

The rise of China, India, ASEAN, Brazil, South Africa, and other emerging economies may be interpreted as a shift from externally driven modernization led by the Global North to more endogenous modernization driven by the Global South. This new normal is characterized by three changes: international development finance is evolving beyond traditional ODA and multilateral lending, with private capital and blended finance becoming increasingly important; connectivity, first developed within ASEAN, is emerging as a broader principle of cooperation; and unbundling is reshaping the global economy, as production, finance, and data are increasingly distributed across borders and reconnected through global networks.

What Is Connectivity?

Long before the Global South became a major international phenomenon, ASEAN was already experimenting with cooperation based on diversity. ASEAN countries differ greatly in development, political systems, and resource endowments, yet ASEAN did not seek to eliminate these differences but to build a community upon them. Connectivity is therefore more than infrastructure: it is a principle of cooperation that creates mutual benefits among countries at different stages of development. ASEAN Connectivity consists of three dimensions — physical, Institutional, and people-to-people — and only when these operate together can regional development be sustained. The key question is no longer whether a country belongs to the North or the South but how countries can be connected, in a transition from South–South Cooperation toward Global Cooperation.

What Is the Global South as a New Policy Space?

The Global South is not simply a geographical category, nor merely another name for developing countries, but a new policy space emerging from the evolution of the international development regime and the changing structure of the global economy, driven by three transformations: the evolution of international development finance; the expansion of connectivity first developed within ASEAN; and the diversification of development pathways through unbundling. Together these have weakened the assumption that development must follow a single sequence. ASEAN, among the first regions to demonstrate the viability of such a model, may be understood as one of the earliest laboratories of the post-Bretton Woods world.

Conclusion:

The evolution of development discourse from the Third World to the Global South reflects a deeper transformation: the success of the Bretton Woods system has transformed the very conditions under which it originally operated. What matters today is the ability to accommodate diversity while sustaining cooperation. ASEAN is important because it did not seek to eliminate diversity but built cooperation upon it, with connectivity as the practical mechanism. The challenge of the twenty-first century is not convergence toward a single model but the maintenance of Path Diversity while achieving common prosperity through connectivity.

(3) Student Assignment

Students were given the following assignment.

In this lecture, Professor Hidetoshi Nishimura invited us to reconsider ASEAN and the Global South not merely as geographical categories, but as an emerging policy space in which new forms of development, connectivity, institutional design, and international order are being imagined.

Please choose one of the following questions or phrases introduced in the lecture, and write a reflective essay based on Professor Nishimura’s ideas and your own academic perspective.

Why the Global South now?

Where does the Global South come from?

Why is Bretton Woods outgrowing its own success?

Why is the Global South reshaping the international order?

Why is ASEAN different?

What does leapfrogging really mean?

What is the new normal?

What is connectivity?

What is the Global South as a new policy space?

In your essay, first explain your own field of study, research interest, or professional background. Then discuss how the selected phrase can be understood from the perspective of that field.

Your essay should not simply summarize the lecture. Rather, it should show how Professor Nishimura’s argument helps you think differently about your own area of expertise, and how your field may contribute to understanding the future of ASEAN, the Global South, and the changing international order.

(4) Discussion

Dr. Kawahara opened the discussion by observing that the lecture had illuminated the mechanisms behind major global shifts from the perspective of a practitioner who has worked at the center of policy. The message that the future is shaped not only by technology or resources but by the kinds of networks that can be built bears directly on healthcare in Asia. Rather than waiting until every country has built a large hospital-based system on the Western model, instead AI, digital platforms, and new preventive and diagnostic technologies could bring advanced healthcare directly into local communities — realizing leapfrogging in the healthcare system. Each Asian society, she suggested, needs its own endogenous system of prevention based on its culture and institutions, in which Path Diversity itself becomes a source of social value. She asked how Prof. Nishimura saw Malaysia’s future role as a hub connecting Japan, ASEAN, and the wider Global South.

Prof. Nishimura emphasized Malaysia’s pivotal role in the completion of the ASEAN Community. Malaysia was chair nation when the ASEAN Community was completed in 2015 and subsequently presented the longer-term ASEAN Community 2025 vision, materializing the connectivity agenda that Prof. Nishimura had outlined in his lecture. ASEAN’s management of diversity, he observed, rests on a single underlying philosophy, namely the value of life. Across differences of religion and stages of development, the human body is the same, and the ways in which life and the life cycle are cared for can differ across societies while a single community is built upon them.

A student asked whether, among the three dimensions of connectivity, there was a preferred sequence for countries with limited resources. Prof. Nishimura responded that the ASEAN Way, in which important decisions require unanimous consensus and progress proceeds through patient, continuous dialogue — musyawarah. When tariff abolition within ASEAN was proposed in 1992, observers considered it impossible for what was then a grouping of small developing economies, yet by 2015 the ASEAN Community had achieved that goal. Similarly, ERIA’s Comprehensive Asia Development Plan (CADP) identified some 700 physical infrastructure projects whose financing initially appeared unanswerable; within roughly twenty years the majority had been substantially completed. Physical, institutional, and people-to-people connectivity have therefore advanced together through ASEAN’s distinctive method of patient consensus.

A student asked what lessons ASEAN’s experience offered for a future global order seeking shared prosperity through connectivity while preserving diversity. In response, Prof. Nishimura noted that the original framework of North–South cooperation was a Northern proposal of the 1960s designed principally to support efficient implementation of Bretton Woods. ASEAN made use of this scheme but never abandoned the spirit of South–South cooperation embodied at Bandung. Looking forward, ASEAN’s recent commitment to a circular-economy framework, including the proposal at the G20 in South Africa to embed circularity in global trade, was highlighted as significant. Circularity is not only an environmental concept but a core principle of industrial policy: the present global economy concentrates on the production side and largely neglects the return side, despite its potential to generate new industries and substantially expand global output.

Dr. Kawahara turned next to haiku, which Professor Nishimura writes under the name Gania Nishimura, and asked whether his way of seeing the world through this form connected to his broader perspective on Asia and humanity, noting the research group’s parallel work on Cancer Haiku with Asia Cancer Forum Artistic Director Kika Hotta. Prof. Nishimura noted that haiku is far more than a short poem. As a form developed within Japanese poetry, it constitutes a model that can connect directly to the deeper strata of human selfhood. Every human being possesses an inner world, yet before the appearance of haiku no literary or philosophical form had been able to reach directly to that inner self. Today, generative AI is in some sense attempting to reach the same place that haiku has already reached. Haiku offers a fundamental element that can speak to the human self in every language; in this sense Cancer Haiku represent an important challenge for humanity as a whole.

Asked finally what quality is most important for young people who wish to work in the international community, and what message he would offer the next generation, Prof. Nishimura replied in a single phrase: respect each other. Differences in development and economic situation are transient, but the value of being human endures, and the recognition that diversity creates cooperation was the message he wished to leave with the students.

Dr. Kawahara closed by returning the discussion to the central question of the lecture series. If ASEAN teaches the importance of Path Diversity, cancer prevention also reminds us that there is no single pathway to health, dignity, and survival; if the Global South teaches the importance of connectivity, cancer prevention requires connectivity too — between hospitals and communities, families and health systems, economic growth and social protection. To discuss cancer prevention is therefore to ask what kind of society Asia will build, and who will be allowed to share in the future.