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By APD writer Alice
The year 2020 is gradually coming to an end, but the COVID-19 pandemic that has raged the world for a year has not shown any signs of easing. According to observers, the epidemiological crisis is revealing a tendency to accelerate the shift of "economic focus" to Asia.
Is 2020 the worst year?
Is 2020 really "the worst year" in human history? The COVID-19 pandemic, which broke out in Wuhan (China) at the end of 2019, has truly left a deep impression on the human mind. According to a statement released by the social network Twitter on December 7, the keyword COVID-19 and related terms were used nearly 400 million times. Because in just a year, the world had more than 76 million people infected with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, of whom nearly 1.7 million died of the disease.
Geopolitical expert Pascal Boniface from the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS) commented that the COVID-19 pandemic will be a memorable event in the history of geopolitics. The familiar world suddenly disappeared and a completely new world suddenly appeared. The whole world was paralyzed and more than half of the global population had to stay at home. Almost all borders were closed. However, at the same time there was not an entirely new structural trend being formed, but rather the acceleration of existing structural trends in terms of geopolitics”.
The West and its double shock
The COVID-19 crisis is a double shock: epidemiological and economic. Economic activities and commercial transactions suddenly stopped while unemployment increased due to the imposition of many strict lockdown measures that made many businesses and businesses go bankrupt. The West realized with surprise that they were overdependent on Chinese supplies, from daily consumer products to items that had been ever considered not important but now become strategic ones such as face masks.
The pandemic is an epidemiological shock because the sudden increase in the number of infections has made governments fail to deal with it. The number of COVID-19 victims in Asia is many times lower than in the West. As the Christmas and New Year holidays near, while Asia is gradually restoring normal life, Europe and the US are still struggling against the pandemic.
Subjectiveness is probably the main cause of this shock. But the outbreaks in Europe and the US also rang the "bell of decline" of the West, with the shocking images of overloaded hospitals in Europe. Pascal Boniface, in his book " COVID-19 Geopolitics" which analyzes what are the mistakes of the West, said that this is really nothing new because for many years, the exclusive strength of the West has no longer existed.
We could say that the COVID-19 crisis should have been a lesson for the West, helping it realize that they are no longer the only countries with power and they are no longer the only rich countries, and that there are other countries that exist and must be given an important place in the international arena.
21st century – the era of Asia
The pandemic is gradually being put under control, so that growth will soon return in Asia, from China to South Korea or Vietnam. Meanwhile, the European market collapsed, falling into a depression that no one knows when it comes to an end. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to accelerate the trend of shifting investment, technology and market shares to the Far East.
According to historian Pierre Grosser, this once again affirms that "the US is no longer the engine of growth for Asia, but Asia itself". It is noteworthy that the COVID-19 broke out in Wuhan but did not prevent China from continuing its development path to become a great power. The epidemic is a "golden opportunity" for Beijing to continue to increase its influence and enhance its economic strength. the pandemic has also made the competition between the US and China on many fronts from economic and military to high-tech fiercer. And Asia will become the main arena for the two world powers to show off their strengths and win their competition.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
