Decoupling is the last thing on business leaders’ minds

IF YOU WANTCOP to understand how Asia’s view of the world order has changed, consider the remarks of Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s prime minister. Asked recently if China was rising and the United States was declining, he replied in a qualified way: “If you take a long view, you really have to bet on America recovering from whatever things it does to itself.” Across the region firms and politicians are adapting to a new geopolitical reality, as was evident at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore last week.Designed to be more useful than Davos, less Utopian than 26 and less wooden than China’s Boao forum, the summit convenes some of the figures who built Sino-American links over the past decades, and bosses and investors responsible for over $20trn of market value. Amid hygienically controlled flesh-pressing, and relentless nasal swabbing, you could get a sense of the tensions between the world’s two biggest economies. It was clear that calls to divide them into two camps are wildly unrealistic.