RUNDOWN:
5:45 pm               Registration
6:00 pm               Opening Remarks
6:05 pm               Presentation
6:15 pm               Fireside Chat
6:45 pm               Q&A
7:05 pm               Closing Remarks
7:10 pm               Book Signing
7:20 pm               End

ASHK Members Ticket: HKD 80
Non-Member Ticket: HKD 100

Asia Society Hong Kong Center (ASHK) is pleased to host a presentation and dialogue with Amitav Acharya is Distinguished Professor and the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance at the School of International Service, American University, on his latest book, The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West, in conversation with Alejandro Reyes, ASHK Scholar-in-Residence and adjunct professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Is the West in decline and retreating from its role on the global stage? Is the US ceding its leading superpower status? What do these shifts mean for a rules-based international order? Or, viewed from a long-term historical perspective, is the rise of non-Western powers both inevitable and beneficial? In his new book, Professor Acharya explores what the West’s decline might mean for the world and finds opportunities for creating a fairer and more balanced international system. Join ASHK to hear more about Professor Acharya’s ideas and to ask your questions about his much-anticipated new book.

Amitav Acharya is Distinguished Professor and the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC. Previously, he was a Professor at York University, Toronto and University of Bristol, U.K., Fellow of Harvard University’s Asia Center, Research Fellow of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Christensen Fellow at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. His most recent book is The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West (New York and London: Basic Books, 2025), which is listed among "The Most Anticipated Books of 2025" by Foreign Policy Magazine. He has written for Australian Financial Review, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, New York Times, Times of India, and Washington Post, among others, and appeared on Al-Jazeera, BBC TV, CGTN, and CNN.

Alejandro Reyes is adjunct professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration (PPA) and senior fellow at the Centre on Contemporary China and the World (CCCW) at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). He is also scholar-in-residence at ASHK and adviser to the research and learning group AI Safety Asia. From 2019 to 2023, he was adjunct professor and director of knowledge dissemination at the Asia Global Institute at HKU, where he managed the digital journal AsiaGlobal Online and other policy research. Prior to that, he was for two years senior policy adviser to the assistant deputy minister for Asia Pacific and set up and led the Asia-Pacific policy planning unit at Global Affairs Canada, the Canadian foreign ministry. He had previously served in the department in 2002 as a senior policy adviser to the Canadian foreign minister.  He began his professional career as a journalist with Asiaweek magazine, part of Time Inc, where he worked from 1988 to 2001 in Hong Kong and Singapore. Born in the Philippines and a citizen of Canada, he was educated at Harvard University and the University of Oxford.

About The Once and Future World Order:

The epic story of the past, present, and future of world order, offering a “timely” (Odd Arne Westad, coauthor of The Great Transformation) argument that the decline of the West may be a good thing for the world.

Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, the West has been in crisis. Social unrest, political polarization, and the rise of other great powers—especially China—threaten to unravel today’s Western-led world order. Many fear this would lead to global chaos. But the West has never had a monopoly on order.
Surveying five thousand years of global history, political scientist Amitav Acharya reveals that world order—the political architecture enabling cooperation and peace among nations—existed long before the rise of the West. Moving from ancient Sumer, India, Greece, and Mesoamerica, through medieval caliphates and Eurasian empires into the present, Acharya shows that humanitarian values, economic interdependence, and rules of inter-state conduct emerged across the globe over millennia. History suggests order will endure even as the West retreats. In fact, the end of Western dominance offers us the opportunity to build a better world, where non-Western nations find more voice, power, and prosperity. Instead of fearing the future, the West should learn from history and cooperate with the Rest to forge a more equitable order.
This is the definitive account of how world order evolved and why it will survive the decline of the West.

Buy a copy of The Once and Future World Order from our store.

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The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and participants and, unless expressly stated to the contrary, do not reflect the opinion, position or official policy of Asia Society Hong Kong, its members, or its committees. Asia Society Hong Kong does not endorse or approve and assumes no responsibility for the content of the information presented.