The Asia Pacific was successful in preserving public health and economic prosperity in 2020, piquing interest in how the region tracked, contained, and controlled the spread of COVID-19. However, the pandemic posed systemic challenges to these societies that have changed how public health, economic development, and environmental stewardship are conducted.

Registered in Taipei as a nonprofit foundation, the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation (CAPRI) serves as the Asia-Pacific Hub of the Reform for Resilience Commission and is a partner of the Miller Center. CAPRI collaborates with other regional hubs and international partners to spearhead the Commission’s research and networking to improve resilience around the world.

CAPRI is also the Asia-Pacific research hub of the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience (PHSSR), an initiative under the World Economic Forum, which includes partners such as the London School of Economics, AstraZeneca, Philips, KPMG, and the World Health Organization Foundation. Through PHSSR, CAPRI conducts systematic reviews of health system sustainability and resilience in selected Asia-Pacific countries with academic partners throughout the region.

CAPRI has contributed to the public health working group of the Brookings Institution’s Democracy in Asia project to analyze how five Asia-Pacific democracies—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, and Australia—address public health challenges through data acquisition and technological innovation while protecting individual liberty and personal privacy. 

CAPRI collaborates with the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) on its flagship publication Strategic Asia, contributing a chapter to the 2023 volume titled “Taiwan: Walking the Tightrope between the United States and China.” The chapter investigates the implications of US–China decoupling for Taiwan’s economy, especially in the semiconductor sector. 

CAPRI’s leadership consists of a board of experts committed to evidence-based public policy analysis and an International Advisory Council whose members are scholars, industry leaders, and international experts in CAPRI’s areas of focus. Professor Syaru Shirley Lin of the Miller Center serves as the chair. Ambassador Stephen D. Mull, vice provost for global affairs at the University of Virginia and senior fellow at the Miller Center, and Mimi Riley, professor of law and Dorothy Danforth Compton Professor at the Miller Center, are members of the International Advisory Council.

Research and Events

February 2024: Experts from Taiwan and the US discussed the importance of a healthy economy as the basis of a resilient democracy in a panel on “Economic and Democratic Resilience in an Election Year: Taiwan and the United States in 2024.” This is the first event co-sponsored by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation USA Foundation (CAPRI USA), in collaboration with CAPRI, the Project on Democracy and Capitalism at the Miller Center, and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.

November 2023: Syaru Shirley Lin joined a panel by NBR, “Reshaping Economic Interdependence in the Indo-Pacific,” to launch Strategic Asia 2023. With stakeholders in Washington, DC, Prof. Lin shared findings from CAPRI’s chapter on the implications of US–China strategic competition on Taiwan’s democratic and economic resilience.

May 2023: At CAPRI’s 2023 Annual Forum on May 29 in Taipei, members of CAPRI’s International Advisory Council, including Vice Provost for Global Affairs Stephen Mull and Professor Mimi Riley, both from the Miller Center, joined CAPRI board members and senior fellows to explore the interconnections of public health, economic dynamism, and environmental sustainability.  Watch the event with highlights here.

April 2023: CAPRI’s inaugural event in the U.S., “Democratic Leadership in a Populist Age,” took place in the Dome Room at the University of Virginia’s historic Rotunda. Malcolm Turnbull, former prime minister of Australia and chair of the International Advisory Council of CAPRI, and Lucy Turnbull, former lord mayor of Sydney, discussed democratic resilience and leadership from the local to the global level. The conversation, introduced by UVA President Jim Ryan, was led by Vice Provost for Global Affairs Stephen Mull. The event was reported by UVA Today. (Co-sponsored by CAPRI, the Miller Center, UVA Global, and the Karsh Institute of Democracy.)

March 2023: CAPRI organized a public forum on “Difficult Choices: Building Taiwan’s Resilience for an Uncertain Future,” featuring a presentation by Dr. Richard Bush, nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and former chairman of American Institute in Taiwan, with remarks from panelists Prof. Jiunn-rong Yeh from National Taiwan University Law School, Dr. Alicia García Herrero, chief economist at Natixis, and Enoch Wu of Forward Alliance. They addressed the challenges Taiwan faces in public finance, environment, health, and defense.

January 2023: “The origin and management of COVID-19: Views from the U.S. front line” featured Matt Pottinger, distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and former U.S. deputy national security advisor, and Yen Pottinger, senior technical advisor for laboratory surveillance at Columbia University and former HIV incidence team lead at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Watch the conversation here. (Co-sponsored by CAPRI and the Miller Center.)

December 2022: Brookings’ Democracy in Asia volume, with a chapter by CAPRI summarizing the findings of the working group, was launched at Brookings Institution and shared with policymakers.

May 2022: Syaru Shirley Lin announced CAPRI’s establishment during PHSSR’s WEF affiliate session “Collaborating to Build Resilient and Sustainable Health Systems” in Davod, Switzerland.

October 2021: CAPRI presented its first global forum, Vaccination and beyond: Lessons for ending the pandemic from the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and the U.S. The event featured experts in academia, government, and the private sector discussing the challenges and lessons in fighting the pandemic in different regions of the world. The public forum also unveiled CAPRI’s first research report, Resilience in the Asia-Pacific: Vaccines and the ‘Triple Challenge.’