In 2020, Laos successfully contained the spread of COVID-19, with very few cases and no deaths. The key elements of the COVID-19 response reflect not only public health advice but also the core values of the political culture promoted by the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. These include unity, solidarity, struggle, respect for science, guidance by a strong center, and the extension of the state into everyday life in the form of designated roles, committees, and organizations. These significantly shaped the social fabric drawn on in the COVID-19 response. This success, then, can be read as a reaping of some of the benefits of this political culture. More ominously, the global pandemic exacerbated Lao PDR’s public debt crisis. Born of years of government backing of megaprojects such as hydropower, this debt is the dark harvest of the LPRP’s reign.

Australia is a middle power caught between rising dependence on China, which seeks a sinocentric region, and growing security reliance on the U.S., which strives for a trans-Pacific community supporting universal values. In light of the Sino-U.S. identity gap and different concepts of regionalism, its response becomes clearer.

Japan's new thinking on regionalism is a means of soft balancing that counters a rising Chinese influence. A "hard" balancing strategy through an alliance with the United States is insufficient because the Chinese economy is indispensable for Japan's prosperity and because China is rising through soft power. Japan's response uses the concept of community based on universal values.