Julie Bishop MP launches Restless Continent

In this video recorded at Parliament House in Canberra on the 14th of September 2015 The Hon Julie Bishop MP discusses the importance of academic discourse in public policy formulation and Australia's engagement in the region. This book is an essential road-map for a region in transition. The world has never seen economic development as rapid or significant as Asia’s during recent decades. Home to three-fifths of humanity, this restless continent will soon produce more than half of the world’s economic output and consume more energy than the rest of the world combined. All but three of the planet’s current and nascent nuclear powers are Asian, and it has the greatest growth in weapons spending of any other region. Surprisingly little hard thinking has been done about the future of Asia. Restless Continent is the first book to examine the economic, social, political and strategic trends across the world’s largest continent and present a road-map for thinking about Asia’s future – and the world. It looks at the psychology of countries becoming newly rich and powerful. It explores the ‘corridors of blood’ – the geography and politics of conflict. And it makes a case about how to avert a plunge into dispute, or even war. Written for general reader and policy specialist alike, Restless Continent is an agenda-shaping book about the shape of international affairs in the twenty-first century.