Out of step

Washington's inflammatory attempts to impose its will on Asia are ill-intentioned and unwelcome

It is over a month since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made her vexing visit to Taipei and China's disapproving response, which included large-scale air and naval exercises around the Taiwan Island. This ill-omened stopover during a trip to Asia by the third-ranking person in the US political hierarchy ineptly created, among other things, further acute doubt about Washington's continuing commitment to the United States' one-China policy.

Professor of modern Chinese history and politics at Oxford University, Rana Mitter, argued that the conditions have been created for stable, free and open trade and interactions between all peoples in the region and that recent events should remind us all that peace and prosperity go hand in hand.

According to Investopedia, China has been the largest trading nation in the world for almost a decade. Total exports in 2019 were estimated to be $2.64 trillion. China has benefitted immensely from this of course－but so too has the rest of the world, not least China's regional neighbors. Despite many challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, Asia has become, as Mitter says, the most economically dynamic area of the world.

This is the reality that East and Southeast Asia have experienced over the last four decades－and value so much. There are geopolitical tensions between some of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations members and China. But all these states have witnessed the huge benefits that have flowed from enhanced trade and development (and avoidance of military conflict) thanks, above all, to the extraordinary and peaceful rise of China.

Even Tokyo and Canberra, which are the most argumentative with Beijing, know Japan and Australia have benefitted immensely from trade with China. Australia, directly as a consequence of its China trade, broke the OECD record for uninterrupted growth stretching over a period of around 30 years.

Kishore Mahbubani, a Singapore-based scholar and former diplomat recently argued that, "Australia's strategic dilemma in the 21st century is simple: It can choose to be a bridge between the East and the West in the Asian Century－or the tip of the spear projecting Western power into Asia."

As it happens, fresh evidence has revealed just how much it has favored that spear-tip role－and how weirdly twisted Canberra's Sinoantagonism has become over the last several years. There have been leaks from meetings of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security and the National Security Committee of the Australian government. According to these verified revelations, former prime minister Scott Morrison took a decision on April 20, 2020 to "up the ante with Beijing", adding that "the time has come [for Australia] to be more strident in its language about China's conduct".

At almost the same time, the then Australian foreign minister Marise Payne issued an incendiary call for a forceful, non-World Health Organization, global inquiry into China's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. This precipitated a rapid deterioration in Australia's relationship with Beijing, which delivered zero benefit to Canberra－apart from empty praise from the Donald Trump administration in Washington at that time.

A little over a year later, in mid-2021, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong wisely advised Morrison that, "there will be rough spots [with China] …you have to deal with them. But deal with them as issues in a partnership which you want to keep going and not issues which add up to an adversary which you are trying to suppress". All subsequent behavioral evidence suggests that this sage advice was comprehensively ignored by Morrison.

Still, the more attentive regional players in this crucial area understand that they have entered the age of the great reset of the established world order: this is the long-term pivot to Asia that truly matters most. Moreover, it was recently observed that all countries in Asia support the one-China principle and view the Taiwan question as an internal affair of China.

Thus, now the dust has settled on Pelosi's wayward visit, we can see how it has confirmed in the minds of almost all regional parties that the last thing they want to see is any sort of enhanced, inflammatory attempts aimed at imposing a US-tilted international order in East Asia. This strategy may be appealing to Washington as it resentfully struggles to come to terms with China's extraordinary success in transforming itself but it has scant appeal within East Asia itself, where trade has improved continuously over the last four decades. Even in Canberra and Tokyo, this penny must surely drop, at some point.

The author is an adjunct professor in the Law Faculty at Hong Kong University. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn