2025 Southeast Asia Regional Geo-Economic Update

The ANU Southeast Asia Institute (SEAI) presents a special Update on Tuesday 2 December 2025, with two distinctive foci:

• Coverage of the sub-region of Southeast Asia as whole, with themes spanning multiple SEA countries; and

• A focus on regional geo-economics, complementing SEAI's inaugural Regional Geopolitical Update in May 2023.

This landmark Regional Geo-Economic Update adopts the theme of Realignments, Resources and Risks. Southeast Asian economies are facing challenges from the structural constraints and contradictions in micro-  and macro- economics, the global climate crisis, technological advancements that are double-edged swords, as well as geopolitical problems and uncertainties.

• How can Southeast Asian countries and societal actors best maintain their developmental imperatives?

• Ought they try to balance a variety of opportunities and risks in different ways across domestic and foreign economic, social and strategic policies?

• How will Southeast Asian political economies ensure the security of critical supply chains and technology?

Convenors: 

Dr Nicholas CHAN & Professor Evelyn GOH, Australian National University

Program

Tuesday 2 December 2025
All sessions: Lecture Theatre 1 (HB1), Hedley Bull Building, ANU

8.30am Arrival and registration

9.00am Welcome and opening remarks

• Professor Helen SULLIVAN, Dean, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
• Professor Evelyn GOH, Director, ANU Southeast Asia Institute

9.30am Panel 1: Realignments

How is Southeast Asia navigating the most pressing geo-economic challenges? How have regional states and actors been realigning in different key areas – great power relationships, domestic state-society relations, and the trade-offs between economic gains and security concerns?

• Professor Helen NESADURAI, Monash Malaysia
• Dr VŨ THÀNH Tự Anh, Fulbright University Vietnam
• Professor Evelyn GOH, Australian National University
• Chair: Dr Nicholas CHAN, Australian National University

Video recording of the Opening and Panel 1

11.00am Morning tea

11.15am Panel 2: Resources

Many Southeast Asian economies are fuelled by the extraction of rich natural resources. How are the challenges of producing, processing and supplying key natural resources changing because of global and regional geo-economic trends? To what extent is resource nationalism exacerbated by great power pressures, global economic fragmentation, and technological constraints and opportunities? How is the 'greening'  imperative in these resource sectors affected by these geo-economic pressures?

• Dr Trissia WIJAYA, University of Melbourne
• Dr Eve WARBURTON, Australian National University
• Chair: Dr Emirza SYAILENDRA, Rajaratnam School of International Studies

Video recording of Panel 2

12.45pm Lunch

1.30pm Panel 3: Risks

Intensifying geo-economic challenges exacerbate the nature and amount of risk endemic to a rapidly but unevenly developing region. What are some of the most significant expressions of such risk in Southeast Asia’s most vulnerable economies, and in the region’s most important economic infrastructure? How are these risks embedded in political-economic systems, and what are the prospects for de-riskification?

• Associate Professor Keith BARNEY, Australian National University
• Ms Elina NOOR, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• Chair: Professor Kanishka JAYASURIYA, Murdoch University

3.00m Update Closing

• Professor Evelyn GOH, Director, ANU Southeast Asia Institute

Video recording of Panel 3 and the Closing