The Chinese solution

Exit Pax Americana… Enter the Chinese solution?

There is a very important article published the other week by The New Yorker that should be must reading for everyone, specially government policy makers, who want to understand how the polarity of the world is tilting. As the article “Making China Great Again” puts it, “As the US retreats globally, China shows up.”

Evan Osnos, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist who has covered China extensively, cited the view of Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in a recent visit to Washington, that the rest of the world can no longer pretend to ignore the contrasts between American and Chinese leadership.

“Since the war, you’ve held the peace. You’ve provided security. You’ve opened your markets. You’ve developed links across the Pacific. And now, with a rising set of players on the west coast of the Pacific, where does America want to go? Do you want to be engaged? If you are not there, then everybody else in the world will look around and say, I want to be friends with both the US and the Chinese – and the Chinese are ready, and I’ll start with them.”

That’s something to think about. PM Lee is not Rodrigo Duterte. The Singaporean leader has expressed support to the US Pivot to Asia and has openly welcomed American engagement in the region. His relationship with Beijing had been tense.

Indeed, one US analyst cited in the article noted the infatuation of Trump to Xi Jinping during his recent visit. Daniel Russel sounded what amounts to a wake-up call to countries like ours with defense treaties with the US.

“The American president is here. He’s looking in awe at the Forbidden City. He’s looking in awe at Xi Jinping, and he’s choosing China because of its market, because of its power. If you thought that America was going to choose you and these ‘old-fashioned’ treaties and 20th-century values, instead of Xi Jinping and the Chinese market, well, think again.”

The article observed that “for years, China’s leaders predicted that a time would come — perhaps midway through this century — when it could project its own values abroad. In the age of ‘America First,’ that time has come far sooner than expected.

“So far, Trump has proposed reducing US contributions to the UN by 40 percent, and pressured the General Assembly to cut $600 million from its peacekeeping budget.

“China’s approach is more ambitious. In recent years, it has taken steps to accrue national power on a scale that no country has attempted since the Cold War, by increasing its investments in the types of assets that established American authority in the previous century: foreign aid, overseas security, foreign influence, and the most advanced new technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

“It has become one of the leading contributors to the UN’s budget and to its peacekeeping force, and it has joined talks to address global problems such as terrorism, piracy, and nuclear proliferation.”

China was initially apprehensive of Trump and his tough anti-China rhetorics. But as the early days of the new American administration unfolded, Chinese leaders started looking at Trump as heaven-sent.

Major General Jin Yinan, a strategist at China’s National Defense University, celebrated America’s pullout from the TPP trade deal. “We repeatedly state that Trump ‘harms China.’ In fact, he has given China a huge gift. That is the American withdrawal from TPP.” Jin, whose remarks later circulated, told his audience, “As the US retreats globally, China shows up.”

China is seizing opportunities presented by Trump. President Xi Jinping spoke at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, reiterating his support for the Paris climate deal and compared protectionism to “locking oneself in a dark room.”

It felt weird to hear the Chinese president defending free trade when for decades, China has relied on protectionism. Trump’s withdrawal from TPP and his anti-foreign trade rhetorics provided an irresistible opening for China to step up.

China is negotiating with at least 16 countries to form the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a free-trade zone that excludes the United States. If the deal is signed next year, as projected, it will create the world’s largest trade bloc, by population.

As America retreats, Osnos observed “China has embarked on history’s most expensive foreign infrastructure plan. Under the Belt and Road Initiative, it is building bridges, railways, and ports in Asia, Africa, and beyond.

“If the initiative’s cost reaches a trillion dollars, as predicted, it will be more than seven times that of the Marshall Plan, which the  launched in 1947, spending a $130 billion, in today’s dollars, on rebuilding postwar Europe.”

Osnos concedes “the US will remain dominant for years to come… And yet the gap has narrowed. In 2000, the US accounted for 31 percent of the global economy, and China accounted for four percent. Today, the US’s share is 24 percent and China’s 15 percent.

“If its economy surpasses America’s in size, as experts predict… At that point, China will play a larger role in shaping, or thwarting, values such as competitive elections, freedom of expression, and an open internet.”

China has avoided directly challenging America’s primacy in the global order, instead pursuing a strategy that Deng, in 1990, called “hide your strength and bide your time.”

But Xi, in his speech to the Party Congress, declared the dawn of “a new era,” one in which China moves “closer to center stage.” He presented China as “a new option for other countries,” calling this alternative to Western democracy the zhongguo fang’an, the “Chinese solution.”

In terms of practical diplomacy, I recall the observation of one of our former foreign secretaries with reference to the US as a superpower during those testy days of the bases negotiations. He said, if you are about to be raped by one with irresistible force, just relax and enjoy it.

President Duterte, in defending his China pivot, had said he merely recognizes the balance of power in the region. I just wonder if he is still in the process of flirting with China or he had already relaxed to reap the maximum benefits of going to bed with the regional superpower.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco.