A summary of Reimagining China and Asia
This week on the News and Information Study Group, our participatory YouTube Live Show, we are reading Reimagining China and Asia by Ambassador Charles W. Freeman, Jr. I would like to summarize it here.
Pictured is Vasco da Gama, the first European, purportedly, to have reached India by sea. Ambassador Freeman mentions him and his expeditions in late 1400’s to mark the beginning of a western Euro-American presence in India; one that is clearly on the decline.
Ambassador Freeman points out this decline has occurred in parallel (because of?) a slumping state department and general lack of confidence in the the diplomatic process. Rather than doubling down on yet another round of increased military spending, Freeman reminds that diplomacy works and requires a fraction of the cost of war and its consequences.
He concludes the article with summary of Asia as geopolitical concept:
The regional order will no longer be managed primarily by the United States. But this is no reason to expect that any other great power, including China, will dominate it.
Unless the United States and China act in such a way as to contrive a different result, Asia’s politics are more likely to continue to be driven by economic rather than military dynamics. — Ambassador Chas Freeman
Questions raised by the article
- What are the measures of success and failure for diplomatic efforts?
- How is goodwill measured/shown?
- How much funding do diplomatic efforts get?
- What are the main mechanisms of US diplomacy in China and Asia?
Acronyms
- PLA: People’s Liberation Army (the PLA Navy or “PLAN”)
- TPP: Trans-Pacific Partnership
- RCEP: Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership
- ASEAN: Association of Southeast Asian Nations
Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Expanded to include: Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam.
Background Information
This is the second article in a three part series. The first was entitled Reimagining Great Power Relations, also by Ambassador Chas Freeman. In this first article he concludes
“Some sort of order must eventually reassert itself in the U.S. government, but the prospects for intelligent dialogue about the implications for American interests of developments abroad seem exceptionally poor.
But such dialogue cannot be deferred for another four years. It seems ever clearer that it will not originate in Washington. It must begin somewhere. Why not here? Why not now?”
Choice excerpts
On Chinese growth and America’s abandonment of the TPP:
All this movement is taking place in a region of 4.4 billion people in which most supply chains converge in China, and which is growing much faster than the world average. America’s abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) left China in the chair as pan-Asian negotiations seek to thrash out new rules for trade and investment through a proposed “Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.” RCEP is a multilateral agreement whose terms none of its members can dictate. The rules governing trade and investment in the Indo-Pacific will not be written by China, but by committees in which Australia, India, Japan, and south Korea as well as ASEAN all have a say. But, inasmuch as TPP’s stated purpose was to keep America first by enabling it rather than China to write such rules for Asia, it is ironic that China will now lead the rule-drafting process. The United States has excluded itself from any direct role in whatever China and other Asians now come up with.
No need to worry too much:
Chinese warnings should clearly be taken seriously. But Chinese aggressiveness, whether economic or military, should not be overestimated. China tends to act with prudence, upon warning, not rashly. It adheres to limited objectives, limited means, and limited time scales. On the other hand, it is characteristically determined, once the die is cast, to invest whatever level of effort is required to achieve its objectives. China has been notably careful to avoid “mission creep” in the wake of success. It has never moved the political goalposts upon military victory. There is no evidence that its ambitions are open-ended or unbridled. Quite the contrary.
On United States’ receding power:
The notion that the United States can forever dominate China’s periphery and its near seas is still an article of faith in Washington. It has steadily diminishing credibility in Asia. America’s power is visibly declining not just in relation to China but also to the increasingly self-reliant allies and friends of the United States in the region. These trends give every sign of accelerating. Increased U.S. defense spending will not alter or reverse them.
Key Points from the article
- Original article by Ambassador Chas Freeman, Reimagining China and Asia
- This is the second of three lectures. The first considered changes in the pattern of relations between great and middle-ranking powers. The third will address the changes underway in the Middle East.
- The only effective constraint on such abuses has been China’s willingness to subject itself to World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute resolution procedures. Will it continue to do so if the United States exempts itself from these procedures as senior officials of the Trump administration suggest it may?
- U.S. dominance of the international state system is expiring– a process accelerated by the new administration’s determination to unilaterally disarm U.S. diplomacy.
- There is no reason to assume that another civilization or country must inevitably succeed the North Atlantic in achieving global military primacy. But, if one does, the most likely candidates are India and China.
- India’s population is about to surpass China’s, but its economy is less than one-fifth as large.
- For the time being, therefore it makes sense to focus on China, rather than India, as the key agent of change in Asia.
- America’s abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) left China in the chair as pan-Asian negotiations seek to thrash out new rules for trade and investment through a proposed “Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.”
- “Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.” RCEP is a multilateral agreement whose terms none of its members can dictate. The rules governing trade and investment in the Indo-Pacific will not be written by China, but by committees in which Australia, India, Japan, and south Korea as well as ASEAN all have a say.
- The Trump administration’s massive budget cuts to the non-military foreign-affairs functions of the U.S. government promise to deepen the decline in American influence in the region as well as globally.
- Sino-American rivalry — political, economic, and military — seems destined to intensify. China can and will easily match defense budget plus-ups by the United States.
- The regional order will no longer be managed primarily by the United States. But this is no reason to expect that any other great power, including China, will dominate it.
- Unless the United States and China act in such a way as to contrive a different result, Asia’s politics are more likely to continue to be driven by economic rather than military dynamics.
Deep Dive Points
- In February 2012, President Xi Jinping [习近平] formally enshrined China’s search for coequal status with the United States in a call for a “new type of great power relations.”
- Their steady shift in favor of China coincides with its growing wealth and power.
- China and the United States have now entered a bilateral arms race. The naval warfare arm of the People’s Liberation Army (the PLA Navy or “PLAN”) has come to boast nearly 500 ships of various classes, dwarfing — in numbers if not in combat power — the roughly 170 vessels the U.S. Navy can call upon in its 7th and 3rd Fleets.
- China’s growing weight as well as doubts about the staying power of the United States , exacerbated by White House rhetoric, have caused China’s neighbors, including longstanding U.S. allies, to begin to reposition themselves.
- Last year, under President Duterte, the Philippines turned its back on America, reached out to China, and sought to establish a connection to Japan independent of Tokyo’s alliance with Washington.
- China is an active participant in almost every gathering in Asia, while America is often unrepresented or excluded.
- Take economic issues first. Unlike most other countries, Beijing habitually applies economic sanctions without announcing, confirming, or denying them.
- For example, in 2000, after south Korea curbed garlic imports from China, it banned the import of Korean cell phones and polyethylene goods. In 2001, China applied import quotas to Japanese automobiles and air conditioners in response to Japanese restrictions on Chinese mushrooms and straw for tatami mats
- China has also used economic coercion in politico-military disputes. In 2012, the maiden attempt by the Philippine Navy to enforce exclusive Philippines jurisdiction in the atoll at Scarborough Shoal [黄岩岛] led to China closing it to Filipino fishermen. China then impounded bananas, pineapples, and other fruit from the Philippines and suspended travel by Chinese tourists to the Philippines. In late 2016, the Philippines reached a broad accommodation with China that temporarily set aside the two countries’ territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
- Also in late 2016, China suspended loan negotiations and blocked truck traffic to punish Mongolia for allowing the Dalai Lama to visit. Mongolia agreed not to do so again.
- In the military domain, China has evidenced a similar pattern of strategic discipline. It showed great patience in its long wait for a negotiated rather than forcible return of Hong Kong and Macau to its sovereignty.
- Even when China goes to war, it keeps channels of communication open. As numerous examples attest, it is careful not to overreach.
- China makes a fetish of avoiding interference in the internal affairs of other states, even its ingeniously obnoxious neighbor, north Korea.
- In its foreign relations, China confers face by ostentatiously lavishing the same formal hospitality and official attention on ministates as on great powers. It gains face and is conciliated by the willingness of foreigners — especially powerful foreigners — to defer to it. When their deference, like that of President Nixon in 1972, manifestly belies their superior power, China’s gain in “face” can enable it to compromise in ways it otherwise could not without feeling demeaned.
- The United Nations, which enshrines the legal principle of sovereign equality in its General Assembly but pragmatically acknowledges the reality of a hierarchy of power in its Security Council, suits Chinese psychology well. This helps to explain why China has become a prime defender of the UN Charter. Beijing’s proposed “new type of great power relations” can be read as an attempt to gain agreement to a “face-based” global order consistent with the UN Charter.
- Despite much shadowboxing by the U.S. armed forces, American military primacy in the Western Pacific will gradually waste away. Both the costs of U.S. trans-Pacific engagement and the risks of armed conflict will rise. The states of the region will hedge. They will either draw closer to Beijing, cleave to Washington, or — more likely — try to get out of the middle between Chinese and Americans. For the most part, they will not repudiate their alliances with America.
Meta
It would be nice to have paragraph numbers on original article and links to pulling the paragraph up in context of the original.
