Northeast-Asia: Lines of Confrontation and Competition between the West and the World Majority

On December 9, 2025, as part of the VII International Conference " The World Majority and the West amid Geoeconomic and Civilizational Transformations", a session entitled "Northeast Asia: Lines of Confrontation and Competition between the West and the World Majority" was held. It was organized by the School of Regional Studies of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, HSE University in partnership with the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ICCA RAS).

The session was moderated by Sergey Luzyanin, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, School of Regional Studies, HSE University, and Pavel Kuznetsov, Deputy Director, Institute of China and Contemporary Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Presentations were delivered by:

• Su Changhe (Fudan University, China) on “From the Reform of Improvement to the Structural Reform of the Global Governance System”;
• Kirill Barsky (Russian Federation, MGIMO University of the Russian Foreign Ministry) on “Northeast Asia: Old Problems and a New Balance of Power”;
• Sergey Tsyplakov (Russian Federation, Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, RAS) on “Trade and Economic ‘Anatomy’ of the Russian-Chinese Partnership”;
• Galina Nikiporets-Takigawa (Russian Federation, HSE University) on “The Foreign Policy of the New ‘Margaret Thatcher’ and Old Security Problems of Japan”;
• Evgeny Kim (Russian Federation, Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, RAS) on “Political and Diplomatic Dimensions of Modern Seoul”;
• Pavel Leshakov (Russian Federation, HSE University) on “The Korean Peninsula: Lines of Confrontation 2025”;
• Nikita Terekhin (Russian Federation, HSE University) on “Foreign Policy Discourse of the DPRK in 2025”;
• Anastasia Pyatachkova (Russian Federation, HSE University) on “China's Discursive Power in the Xi Jinping Era”;
• Ilya Kozylov (Russian Federation, HSE University) on “Current Trends in Transregional Cooperation between China and Russia (using Western Siberia as an Example).”

The central focus of the session was the specifics of split lines and confrontations in Northeast Asia. Participants examined, across China, Japan, and Korea, the emergence of new and exacerbated old conflicts between the world majority countries (Russia, China, and North Korea) and the countries of the “American world” (Japan and South Korea). They also examined how the challenges of global governance transformation are projected onto regional issues of Chinese positioning, including new interpretations of China's “discursive power.” Special attention was paid to the specifics of the renewal of the ruling elites in South Korea and Japan, and the processes of forming new regional (Eurasian) security formats by Russia, China, and North Korea.