Asia, explained.

Every year, the Asia Power Index produces a handful of results that seem counterintuitive (Davisuko/Unsplash)

Power in Asia: Outliers and curiosities

Some findings of the latest Asia Power Index controvert conventional wisdom.

Susannah Patton,Jack Sato

23 September 20244 min read

Each year, the Lowy Institute Asia Power Index ranks the relative power of states in Asia across eight metrics. The key findings for 2024 are available on the Asia Power Index interactive. However, like every year, there are a handful of results that seem counterintuitive. In this article, we unpack the top five for 2024.

Singapore is more powerful than Indonesia

Singapore ranks eighth out of 27 countries for comprehensive power in Asia, besting ninth-ranked Indonesia by one place. How is it possible that a country of fewer than six million people, with a land size of around 700 square kilometres, can be more powerful than a nation of 280 million spread across almost 1.9 million square kilometres? Even when it comes to GDP, Indonesia’s economy is four times larger than that of Singapore.

While this finding may seem counterintuitive, consider that power is the capacity of a state to shape and respond to its external environment. Singapore is small, wealthy and highly networked with the world. So while it lags Indonesia in terms of national resilience, Singapore is able to devote more resources to its military capability and is more deeply integrated into the region through defence networks, cultural projection, and trade and investment links. By contrast, Indonesia’s huge population and lower level of development demands trade-offs, typified by president-elect Prabowo Subianto’s commitment to both military modernisation and providing free lunches to school children.

India’s population doesn’t make it a superpower

The Asia Power Index ranks India third for overall power – well behind China and the United States – which goes against the grain of the assumptions that many Indians have about their country’s influence. The Pew Research Center shows that 68 per cent of Indians see India’s power as on the rise, compared to a median of 28 per cent in other countries surveyed about India’s influence. Yet much like Indonesia, India’s huge population is a call on resources as well as a resource in and of itself. This paradox is summed up neatly by US strategist Michael Beckley’s shorthand formula for calculating comprehensive national power: multiplying GDP by GDP per capita, to account for the welfare costs imposed by a large population. The Asia Power Index provides a granular assessment that tracks in line with this approach. It shows that India still has latent potential to increase its influence in Asia.

South Korean popular culture isn’t a superpower

Korean pop, beauty, drama and fashion are all conquering the world. So why does the Asia Power Index rank South Korea just eighth for cultural influence, a decline from seventh place in 2023?

The Asia Power Index doesn’t specifically measure indicators such as online streaming numbers from Spotify or Netflix because it isn’t possible to accurately benchmark or compare interest in the 27 countries of the Asia Power Index. Are we missing a trick? One indicator we do track is export of cultural services. In 2022 (the most recent year of data available), South Korea’s cultural exports reached US$2 billion, nearly double their 2021 value. Online search interest in South Korea, which we measure, is also a proxy for cultural power because related terms such as “Korean food”, “K-pop” or “K-beauty” are captured. Yet in 2022 and 2023, South Korea’s world cup football games attracted more online search interest in Asia than the announcement that its biggest boy band, BTS, would be completing military service. This suggests that pop culture is a less important driver of cultural influence than many assume.

North Korea is resilient

A secretive dictatorship with closed borders and an estimated GDP per capita of just $1,057 might sound in danger of collapsing in on itself. So it will surprise some readers to learn that North Korea ranks ninth for the resilience measure. Consider, however, that resilience is defined as the capacity to deter external threats to state stability. While North Korea scores near the bottom on most of the determining sub-measures – internal stability (ranked 24th), resource security (7th), geoeconomic security (26th) and geopolitical security (22nd) – it ranks fourth for nuclear deterrence because it is one of just a handful of countries in Asia with nuclear capabilities. It also scores relatively highly (7th) for resource security, mostly because it is nearly self-sufficient in energy. Standing alone and avoiding dependence on others is the regime’s primary goal. But its success in this domain comes at a cost in others: the country has a score of 0.0 for economic relationships.

The US still leads China on technology

At first glance, the finding that the United States still handily beats China in the technology sub-measure (a component of economic capability) might seem at odds with daily headlines that posit China’s growing technological edge over the West. Certainly, China has an advantage in some critical technologies and green technology such as electric vehicles. But increasingly, analysts are pushing back on the idea that China has already established tech supremacy. Almost all the top ten largest technology companies by market capitalisation are still US companies. China’s innovation spending has achieved results in some areas, but is still wasteful and inefficient. The Asia Power Index focuses on the underlying fundamentals of tech success, rather than particular technologies, and these suggest that overall the United States remains in the lead.