The very idea of globalisation seems like a hollow joke at a time when the world is splitting into rival manufacturing blocs and supply chains, economic and political nationalism is growing and the West is confronting Russia in Ukraine. Yet, Asian countries want to preserve the concept. The reason is primarily economic. Export-oriented manufacturing economies of the kind that characterise much of East Asia have benefited greatly from open Western markets for more than half a century, and Western companies have benefited from access to relatively cheap Asian labour. Globalisation was never more than a halfway house or staging point on the road to a united world, though, and it has developed many holes in its roof, cracks in its walls and weaknesses in its foundation. It needs a new design and rebuilding before it collapses, rather than just patching up. I argued in a presentation 20 years ago at an Asian Development Bank 2002 annual meeting that “globalisation means different things to different people, and it has become an all-encompassing term covering a variety of internationalising trends”. The fact that these developments were not accompanied by the advent of anything resembling a world government , a unified global culture or a universal language suggested globalisation was no more than a label for describing a set of essentially economic phenomena, I said. It might therefore be premature to view globalisation as “a process destined to go forward under its own momentum. The borderless world of business is subject to disruption by nationalism , and there is evidence that this is producing friction.” Those remarks proved to be not far wide of the mark. Is the coronavirus fatal for economic globalisation? But the charge list against globalisation could have been longer. I was reminded of this in an essay by Pascal Lamy , former head of the World Trade Organization and now president of the Paris Peace Forum, a French non-profit body which hosts gatherings of world leaders to foster global solutions. What is required, Lamy argued, is a new global economic order that offers the benefits of international economic cooperation but within a framework of governance that limits the instability and inequality that globalisation has brought. The current economic order, he said, “is a legacy of Western capitalism that has developed since the 16th century following successive waves of globalisation. The ideology underpinning this development is based on liberalism, markets and free enterprise, while science, technology and competition are seen as the main sources of innovation and economic growth.” The system is now being questioned, he said, largely due to financial instability, rising inequality, environmental costs, a deficit in global governance and a geopolitical shift due to China’s rise. Lamy observed that “financial instability, a well-known feature of capitalism, was one of the main factors that led to the 2008 world economic crisis . The root of the crisis was mainly due to insufficient regulation of a financial industry which had rapidly globalised.” The sheer scale of financial deregulation “has been to embed great complexity into the system. Another serious outcome has been the creation of exotic financial instruments where they are now packaged and repackaged into ever more complex products. This makes it increasingly hard to understand the international financial system, let alone regulate it.” Even more challenging, Lamy said, is “the need to match an increasingly open world trading system with greater international fiscal and monetary coordination, but the macroeconomic adjustment, which conventional wisdom says is needed to reduce surpluses in Asia, and deficits in America, has barely begun. Successive waves of globalisation have also promoted the growth of inequality .” Lamy is not in favour of trashing globalisation. He argues that “Asia wants to resume the process as quickly as possible, and the same commitment comes from Africa. For most of the world, globalisation is the way to get out of poverty and may entail for some time an increase in inequality.” But how is Asia to resume the process and get enough countries on side with the idea of a better form of globalisation – one that avoids the shortcomings of market capitalism identified by Lamy while also avoiding the “dead hand of the state” – when some big guns are on one side and others are on another? By encouraging the concept of an alliance of rules-based democracies versus a China-led group of state-dominated economies or autocracies, the US and western Europe have effectively ruled out cooperation among the world’s largest powers. This division has brought the world to an impasse and closer to global conflict than at any time since World War II. The only way out may be for smaller nations in Asia, South and Central America and Africa to form an alliance and make their voices heard while there is still time. Anthony Rowley is a veteran journalist specialising in Asian economic and financial affairs