Hervé Lemahieu was working at a think tank in London seven years ago when the Lowy Institute approached him with an intriguing project: could he create a power list for countries in Asia?

Similar analyses had been done in the Cold War era when nuclear warheads and coal and steel production were used to measure the relative power of the Soviet Union. But Lemahieu decided that “in the 21st century, we need to be a little bit more inventive in terms of how we measure power and influence”.