A Q&A with Hugh White, a former top Australian official who feels Beijing has already filled the U.S. leadership void.
Contrary to what you might read or hear, President Donald Trump alone hasn't surrendered U.S. strategic leadership in Asia to China. What he has done is accelerate long-term trends that have severely diminished America's position in the Western Pacific, an area where the U.S. had held sway largely unchallenged since World War II.
That era of primacy is close to an end. In fact, the U.S. strategic position is eroding so quickly that even sharing the region with China isn't really a valid option any longer, argues Hugh White, a professor at the Australian National University in Canberra. America's allies in Southeast Asia and Australia say they don't want to choose between the U.S. and China, but underneath those platitudes, nobody in the region wants to make an enemy of Beijing. All the more so because officials increasingly doubt the U.S. will be there in the end, according to White.
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WNU Editor: Some believe that China has already eclipsed the U.S. .... especially on economic issues. I have a different opinion. America's trade imbalance with Asia in 2017 was an astounding $528 billion. Asia (specifically China) is dependent on this trade deficit to continue if they want their economies to grow. And while the U.S. military and political position in Asia may be in a decline, its economic importance on trade cannot be underestimated. My prediction .... the U.S. .... whether it is now or in the future .... is going to limit imports and it is going to use trade as a lever to influence countries .... and starting with China. Any doubts that the U.S. is in decline will end when that happens.But it is also true that in the long run China will dominate Asia .... it is just not going to happen as quickly as some would like to believe.
I am always impressed by the long term prediction when we are rarely able to predict the next week.......
ReplyDeleteEveryone thought Japan was going to surpass the US economically in the 1980s, yet they did not, and it was not (ultimately) due to the US using trade as a bargaining chip. What happened in Japan will happen in China. As you eventually use up all of your underutilized labor, wages will rise. Once wages rise your trade advantage falls. Export oriented growth always has a limit. We already see China losing out to SE Asia and Africa on the production of the most basic (labor intensive) exports. Eventually economic growth comes from technology driven productivity growth, not exports. China may surpass the US in this eventually, but I'm not seeing the institutions put in place yet to think this is a strong bet. I would guess American decline in its ability to continue to come up with the next great technological innovations is a greater fear.
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