This is the final 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.

Yuichi Hosoya (left) and Yoichi Funabashi | COURTESY OF YUICHI HOSOYA; SEIICHI OTSUKA / API
Yuichi Hosoya (left) and Yoichi Funabashi | COURTESY OF YUICHI HOSOYA; SEIICHI OTSUKA / API

Funabashi: In the postwar international society, the prevailing view has been that a “good” society is a democracy that achieves economic growth, using gross domestic product as the standard metric.