CHINAwatch

Donald Trump’s dangerous China illusions

An Opinion piece on the Boston Globe of 5 February, 2017 by Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, and author of “The Age of Sustainable Development” explains why America's post-WWII tactic of containment and coercion against challengers of US dominance will no longer work this time with China.  

Unlike the USSR and late-20th-century Japan, China's economic size and connectivity is sui generis in an era of global inter-connection and inter-dependence, which China, out of her own necessity, is embracing with a vengeance. 

A common suspicion is that President Xi is trying to displace America as the world's new hegemon. However, owing to demographics and a mountain of domestic challenges, China's per capita income is unlikely ever to exceed that of the United States, let alone the global appeal of her political system. On the other hand, a rising China can be accommodated peacefully to play a constructive role in addressing some of the world's most pressing challenges, including Climate Change. poverty relief, and pandemic diseases. 

To understand what Presdient Xi is trying to achieve, an article of 15 November 2016 by Damien Ma, fellow and associate director of the Paulson Institute and adjunct lecturer of the Kellogg School of Management, is instructive. Click here

Global Implications of the Trump Presidency 特朗普总统的全球性影响

My Keynote PowerPoint presentation at Hong Kong's Shue Yan University weekly assembly on 24 January, 2017. 

Download Implications of the Trump Presidency

Video recording (in English) 

Subsequent video interview (in Cantonese 广东话)

China introduces "social credit rating" system

My live TV interview on 17 February, 2017 on Money Talks: China's Credit Crackdown with TRT (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation), Turkey’s national public broadcaster based in Istanbul. 

US Policy Towards China: Recommendations for a New Adminstration

The above is a February 2017 Report prepared by a Task Force for the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations and the University of California San Diego’s 21st Century China Center. 

Co-chaired by Orville Shell (Wealth and Power, China’s Long March to the 21st Century) and Elizabeth Economy, director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Task Force comprises a host of distinguished international relations and China experts including Thomas Christensen (The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power), and David Shambaugh (China’s Future), with discussants such as Jeffrey Bader, Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution, and David Lampton, Professor and director of China Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. 

The Report emphasizes the importance of America's network of alliances and partnerships and its robust set of multilateral institutions. It advocates that the United States should engage China from a position of strength, garnishing China's help in countering North Korea, brokering sound agreements for fairer trade and promoting compliance with international law and norms. In particular, it recognizes US national interest to maintain an active presence in the Asia-Pacific region and to strive, if possible, for stable and mutually beneficial relations with China.

The Report first and foremost flags up the overriding importance of maintaining the One China Policy, which has best served American national interests and those of Taiwan and the region for decades.  

The Report lists six most immediate and urgent priorities - :

• Work with China to halt North Korea’s nuclear and missile program
• Reaffirm US commitments to Asia
• Deploy effective tools to address the lack of reciprocity in US trade and investment relations with China
• Intensify efforts to encourage a principled, rules-based approach to the management and settlement of Asia-Pacific maritime disputes
• Respond to Chinese civil society policies that harm US organizations, companies, individuals, and the broader relationship
• Sustain and broaden US-China collaboration on global climate change.

The Report also outlines 10 broad and long-term issues which need to be properly managed -

• Cyber issues
• Energy and climate change
• Global governance
• Asia-Pacific regional security 
• North Korean nuclear threat 
• Maritime disputes 
• Taiwan and Hong Kong 
• Human rights 
• Defense and military relations 
• Trade and investment relations

Overall, the Report doesn't amount to a major departure from the existing strategy, with a more robust approach to attain broadly similar objectives. Perhaps a new emphasis is to secure a quid pro quo treatment of American civil society organizations in China, including American equivalents to China's Confucius Institutes in the United States. This underscores the importance of American soft-power in forging better China relations amenable to US national interest. 

The U.S.-China Military Balance in the Western Pacific

An analytical article dated 1st February 2017 on Modern Diplomacy, a Europe-centric global-strategic think-tank, highlights China's rapid development of anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities in the form of anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) and  manoeuvrable, technologically-advanced sea mines.

It concludes -

"Although it is generally believed that the U.S. combined with its allies far outspends China in overall defense, this net assessment briefly analyzed two key asymmetries in the areas of ASBMs and sea mines that reveal a disturbing trend in the military balance – large U.S. defense expenditures may not translate into military effectiveness. Naturally this raises not only serious questions concerning the ability of the U.S. to maintain the status quo in the Western Pacific, but also to assure allies as well as defend U.S. territory in the region from attack. If over the next five to 15 years, U.S. and PLA forces continue on approximately current trajectories, “Asia will witness a progressively receding frontier of U.S. dominance,” one RAND Corporation report concludes. To shift the balance back in its favor, the U.S. must take measures to restore its historic advantages in power projection. To do so, it will have to develop not only more innovative alliance strategies that exploit both their growing capabilities and their weariness of China, but the U.S. will also need to develop innovative military capabilities to restore its dominance."

The article, however, does not address non-military, geopolitical dynamics in the region. Thanks to China's centrality in the regional, and global, supply and value chain, most of China's Western Pacific neighbors, with the notable exception of Japan, are beholden to trade and investment flows to and from China as the unchallenged, highly-competitive, central hub. This dependence is further driven by the Fourth Industrial Revolution and China's recent One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative.  Few of China's neighbors have the inclination, nor the economic wherewithal, to help precipitate a regional, let alone a global, war against China.

Hence, while continuing to strengthen military capabilities to defend and project national interests, China doesn't need to rely on the military alone to grow regional influence. Indeed, unless pushed into a corner, why should China opt for war if the objective can be achieved by peaceful means? 

On the other hand, the relationship between China the United States doesn't need to be looked at only in zero-sum terms. Jack Ma's recent apparent rapport with President Trump is instructive over his idea of using Alibaba's e-trading platform to create one million American jobs by selling US goods and services to China and the rest of Asia.