This is the first installment of a four-part series of conversations between Yoichi Funabashi, the chairman of the nonprofit independent think tank Asia Pacific Initiative (API), and Yuichi Hosoya, a professor of international politics at Keio University and senior consulting fellow for API, about how the world may look in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
Funabashi: The novel coronavirus seems to be transforming the global order by frightening societies and battering economies around the world.
Hosoya: We are in the midst of a global decline because of the virus. In the United States, job losses in the past month alone equaled the number seen in the previous 10 years: 20 million.