Since my last book, The Veil of Circumstance: Technology, Values, Dehumanization and the Future of Economics and Politics, published in 2016, the world has undergone dramatic changes. Digitalization has undermined and replaced well-known structures, forcing nation-states to develop new technology, to figure out how to use it, and to analyse the interactions with the established parameters of power. The power game is increasingly about gaining the technological edge.

The winner may not necessarily be the nation-state in possession of the “best” technology. The interaction between technology and human beings may be more important than the technology itself. How to mobilize and maximize the skills of people with the technology and how technology is used to rally people around a common purpose will be the crux. This is becoming increasingly difficult because of the diverse social networks and the diffusion of power.

The cocktail of “capitalism, technology and globalization” worked wonderfully for decades, but the number of social losers and disenfranchised people has grown, sowing discontent and frustration. A gap has opened up between the elite and the discontented. The global financial crisis disclosed the fragility of the existing economic model and political system. The negative side effects of globalization are becoming increasingly evident.

Statistics for economics, trade and investment show a tendency for stronger regionalization. The drive for the technological edge has pushed superpowers to look for partners in the region, with the result that countries in the region have been pushed towards a stronger link with the regional superpower. These superpowers have scaled down their commitments to the global system, as they are unable to offer the same level of “protection” as they had in previous decades.

In Asia this is visible in China's drive for its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and even more so in its tremendous efforts to be a global technological leader in such areas as artificial intelligence and 5G, and perhaps also biotechnology. As globalization fades, it will be difficult to thrive outside an economic space—impacting on technology, communication, energy, and possibly currency—defined by China. India, Japan and Southeast Asia may not be large enough to contest this development, but they are strong enough to prevent China from becoming too dominant—the dependency is not one way, as China needs them almost as much as they need China.