Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions to know? Sign up for the Today’s WorldView newsletter.
On Sunday, an annual meeting of Pacific Rim countries ended with a clash between two behemoths. The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, held in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, saw Chinese and American representatives continue their countries’ battles over trade. For the first time in the bloc’s history, there was no joint communique issued at the summit’s end.
The impasse echoed the rancor at the Group of Seven summit in Quebec this summer, where a spat with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prompted President Trump to reject a joint statement agreed to by key U.S. allies. But this time, it wasn’t the White House that was blamed for the breakdown.
Citing an official from the American delegation, the Wall Street Journal reported China balked at a single proposed sentence in the communique: “We agreed to fight protectionism including all unfair trade practices.” Beijing has refused to acknowledge one of Washington’s main grievances — its alleged coercing of U.S. companies to transfer technology to Chinese counterparts — and believed the proposed wording was too direct a jab at China.
“China wouldn’t agree to that language, believing it amounted to a ‘singling out’ of Chinese trade practices,” noted the Journal. “Other APEC members favored including the language in the final communiqué, the official said. Officials at the meeting from several nations said the fight wasn’t only between the U.S. and China. Other APEC members also lined up against Beijing.”
Another account from an Australian journalist suggested there was equal frustration with both countries. “You all know who the two big giants in the room were, so what can I say?” Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said to reporters.
Whatever the case, things clearly were heated. “Emotions were so high at the summit, dominated by disagreements between the United States and China, that Chinese officials demanding a meeting with Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister, who was leading negotiations, forced their way into his office on Saturday and had to be escorted away by police after a confrontation,” the Journal reported, citing two senior officials from the host country.
Chinese officials denied the report, but they couldn’t dispel the dark clouds looming over the proceedings.
For President Xi Jinping, the APEC summit was supposed to highlight China’s friendly face to the world. Instead, he faced off against Vice President Pence, who used the forum to decry China’s global development projects as “opaque” schemes that saddle weaker countries with “staggering debt.” The United States launched a rival infrastructure initiative, backed by Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
“As far as Beijing is concerned, the weekend was the time to showcase China’s emergence as a benign superpower in the South Pacific. Instead, public distaste for and rebuke of its ‘sharp power’ was on show,” wrote John Lee, an adjunct professor at the University of Sydney. “Xi defended China’s trade practices and denied that its Belt and Road Initiative contained hidden geo-political and other sinister motivations. And no matter how adamantly he did so, it was not a conversation that Xi intended to have when he first landed in Port Moresby.”
The showdown illustrated a deepening political reality in Asia: Many countries are far more wary of an increasingly assertive China than the United States, the old guarantor of security in the Pacific.
“Few in East Asia want to live in the shadow of a hegemonic China. The fear of that prospect has long underpinned America’s East Asian security architecture, which is based on bilateral alliances and forward deployment of the US military. And it sustains widespread support in East Asia for the US to act as a strategic counterweight in the region,” wrote Minxin Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in the United States. “To be sure, most East Asian countries prefer not to choose a side outright. But if the US and China were to engage in direct strategic conflict — an increasingly likely prospect — it is the US that would gain the most support, especially from allies like Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam. Malaysia and Singapore would probably also back the US.”
That said, Washington can’t rest on its laurels. Many governments in Asia are as perturbed by Trump’s penchant for protectionism as they are by China’s growing clout on the world stage. Beijing, for example, has made significant overtures to Japan, hoping to mend fences and capitalize on Trump’s unpopularity.
“The dynamics between the U.S. and China are also affecting how countries in the region interact with each other, and how they view regional and global institutions,” wrote Merriden Varral of the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank. “The apparent thaw in relations between China and Japan is a good example. Fears over deepening global trade tensions are further encouraging some countries, such as South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia, to actively consider joining the revamped Trans-Pacific Partnership.”
Rory Medcalf, a prominent Australian commentator on security issues and international affairs, wrote that “the scene is now set for prolonged confrontation” between the United States and China. He also pointed to an “accelerating regional great game” where countries such as Australia, Japan, Indonesia and India deepen cooperation and “define alternatives” to both a rising China and the waning Pax Americana.
Xi may not be quite as prepared for that game as it may seem. In a rare and provocative riposte to the country’s central leadership, Beijing’s former chief trade negotiator recently commented that China wasn’t thinking “deeply enough” during its current confrontation with Washington.
“The Chinese still don’t know how to handle Trump, and they don’t really know what they’re doing,” Trey McArver, founding partner of Beijing-based consultancy Trivium China, said to The Washington Post’s Finance 202 newsletter. “They don’t have any new ideas. I think they’re just spinning their wheels.”
Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions to know? Sign up for the Today’s WorldView newsletter.
Credit:Washington Post
via USAHint.com
No comments:
Post a Comment