[Asian leaders know that their economies – and therefore, domestic politics – rely on Beijing, which has shown it will offer investment to friends and economic punishment to those who displease it.]
By Max Fisher and Audrey
Carlsen
We asked a panel of experts how they think
the power has shifted in the past five years:
The stakes could hardly be higher: Two powers
are seeking to reshape the economies and political systems of the world’s most
populous region in its own image.
The United States’ military capabilities
still dominate Asia. But China has started to wield growing military power and
economic leverage to reorder the region, pulling longtime American allies like
the Philippines and Indonesia closer.
The shift in power toward China may
accelerate under President Trump, whose volatile foreign policy and rejection
of trade agreements is already forcing Asian nations to rethink their
strategies.
On Thursday, a group of 11 nations signed a
trade deal without the United States, a powerful signal of how countries like
Australia and Japan are forging ahead without American leadership. The deal
replaces the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Mr. Trump had effectively killed.
Every Asian country now trades more with
China, often by a factor of two to one, an imbalance that is only growing as
China’s economic growth outpaces that of United States.
Asian leaders know that their economies – and
therefore, domestic politics – rely on Beijing, which has shown it will offer
investment to friends and economic punishment to those who displease it.
But another metric of great power influence,
arms sales, shows United States’ enduring reach.
Countries that purchase American weapons bind
their militaries and their foreign policies to the United States. The imbalance
reflects the extent of American military relationships in Asia, which date back
to World War II.
Many of the 20 countries caught between
Beijing and Washington face an impossible choice between Chinese wealth and
American security.
“These countries don’t want to have to choose
sides,” said Tanvi Madan, an Asia specialist at the Brookings Institution.
So they’re not. Instead, most are pursuing
strategies intended to draw maximum benefit from both powers, minimize risks of
angering either and preserve their independence.
The result will likely be something very
different from Cold War-era Europe, which was divided cleanly between two
sides. Instead, the continent will fracture along many lines at once as
countries accept, reject or manage China’s growing influence.
Each strategy involves hard compromises and
provides a model for how others in Asia, and perhaps one day globally, will
cope with a Chinese-American world.
Though the world is changing in Beijing’s
favor, Japan is a reminder that China remains a long way from becoming an
American-style power. And it provides a template for counteracting China.
Japan is matching China’s rise with its own
resurgence, leveraging its economy — the world’s third-largest — to build an
independently powerful military and set of diplomatic relationships. It is
attempting to reconstitute an informal and implicitly anti-Chinese alliance
known as “the quad,” which includes India, Australia and the United States.
The “quad” remains mostly aspirational, and
its members so far exert only a fraction of China’s economic and military
influence in the region.
Still, Japan represents the headwinds facing
Beijing. Asia’s largest economies and its leading democracies, rather than
bending to Chinese power, are counterbalancing against it.
Most countries lack Japan’s economic power,
but they can still follow its lead. Rather than meekly accepting American
withdrawal, Japan shows how countries can compensate for it.
The region has more bad news for China. Even
its sole ally, North Korea, is increasingly independent. Its nuclear and
missile tests often appear timed to humiliate Beijing, and give China’s
adversaries like Japan an excuse to build up their militaries. North Korea
apparently hopes to one day strike a deal with Washington, allowing it to climb
out from a half-century of Chinese dominance. If Beijing cannot keep even North
Korea as a client state, it will have trouble cultivating others.
Sri Lanka might not seem like a geopolitical
bellwether. But Asia-watchers have been glued to developments here since 2014,
when a Chinese submarine sailed into a port built with Chinese investment. It
marked a new era, in which China is converting its economic power into military
power — and, in poorer democracies, into political influence.
China has since developed more infrastructure
projects across Asia, particularly in strategically vital ports and transit
corridors. Those projects begin as joint developments but can end up in Chinese
hands. In December, Sri Lanka, unable to pay debts on the port’s construction,
granted China a 99-year lease.
“The Chinese are using their abundance of
labor, capital and workforce to project their influence,” said Mira
Rapp-Hooper, a scholar of Asian security issues at Yale Law School. She added,
“It’s mostly taking place in countries where the U.S. does not have a lot of
influence or give a lot of aid.”
This a promising model for China, whose
economic strengths naturally fit the needs of small, developing countries. It
is even pushing in countries where the United States has spent heavily, such as
Pakistan. And it is slowly extending this model beyond Asia, giving it the
outlines of what could one day be a global network.
But small, poor allies are less powerful than
rich ones, which tend pro-American, and Beijing can be clumsy when dealing with
democracies.
Still, China’s success in South Asia shows it
can hem in a powerful adversary. It is leveraging trade and investment to build
ties with every country on India’s border. Beijing’s unstated goal: encircle
India before it can rival to Chinese power. While India is taking a harder line
against China, it is less practiced in regional alliance-building and has
fallen behind.
Many Asian leaders are eluding the great
powers by hedging between them. Few have done so as creatively and brazenly as
President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines.
Upon taking office in 2016, Mr. Duterte
suggested that he might end his country’s 65-year alliance with the United
States. He rushed to Beijing, promised cooperation with China and – as if to
signal there was no going back – crudely insulted then-President Barack Obama.
Instead, Mr. Duterte ended up collecting
concessions from both powers. The Americans reduced Mr. Duterte’s obligations
to the alliance while continuing to guarantee his country’s defense. The
Chinese offered Mr. Duterte favorable terms on maritime disputes and possible
investment deals.
He never did switch sides.
Such stories have played across Southeast
Asia, where China has been at its most confrontational. Beijing had hoped that it
could coerce smaller countries to accept its dominance. Washington thought it
might galvanize an anti-Chinese bloc. Nearly every country has found a middle
path.
Even Vietnam, a traditional Chinese
adversary, has resisted both Chinese influence and American overtures. Almost
two years after President Obama lifted his country’s arms embargo on Vietnam,
hoping to bring it into the American fold, it still buys most of its arms from
Russia.
But China’s leverage in the region can only
grow, particularly if the United States continues withdrawing. Ms. Rapp-Hooper
called attention to growing scandals in Australia and New Zealand over Chinese
influence-buying.
“These countries could not be more aligned
with our interests, but there is still a lot of discomfort about stepping away
from Chinese money,” she said. “Those are tests of what we’re up against.”
This is another possible future: countries
subject to influence from both powers, with American and Chinese hands on their
economies and politics. It’s a future that is both American and Chinese, with
nations in the middle neither fully independent nor clearly aligned.
