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Here's something I've been thinking about for a while, that the recent China-Japan thread discussion put into order in my mind.
The nature of China's place in Asia is determined by whether or not China can be the hegemon. China will not be 2nd place in Asia, because when it is, then Asia is unstable. China is a natural hegemon for Asia much as the US is for the Western Hemisphere and the Franco-German axis is for continental Europe.
Japan is handicapped by its history (and by a faltering economy and demographic profile) to never have a leading position in Asia, but when Asia does not have a clear hegemon China and Japan inevitably collide as rivals. The United States is too weak and too faraway to play this role in perpetuity. Hence unless a grand bargain can be achieved that places China in a role over ASEAN + Korea/Taiwan akin to Prussia’s role over other German states in the 19th century, then there will never be peace in East Asia.
What the US is calling for right now in its “soft pivot/ASEAN cooperation/US AirSea battle”, is for the ASEAN states to play the role of Lilliputians to the Chinese giant. This is akin to placing faith in an unstable setup. The SE Asian community is not nearly as united by common values or heritage as Western and Northern Europe were; it would be fantasy to think that they are and can form a NATO redux. What’s more, such an alliance gets weaker and weaker as members get pried loose from it, and those members are more and more likely to bind with Beijing as the alliance grows weaker. What this means is that Washington is presenting Beijing with a chessboard where instability is self-reinforcing and leads to a desirable outcome; Beijing will have every incentive to "cause trouble".
Put another way, the US is cynically trying to get the SE Asian nations to sacrifice their own stability to keep Beijing from spreading its wings as a regional hegemon, by expecting SE Asian nations to not only go against the natural pull of a neighboring hegemon, but also learn to cooperate with each other where there once was no such cooperation.
Of course, the alternative method of keeping Beijing down–a massive commitment of US resources–also leads to the freeloader problem amongst East Asian countries, akin to how Israel and Saudi Arabia freeload off US security commitments in the Middle East to disrespect human rights and engage in reckless geopolitical gambles.
Neither outcome is desirable. The only logical outcome is to accept Chinese hegemony over the region. Every other outcome leads to war and suffering, and as China outstrips the US in GDP and even raw military capability close to its own shores, more and more likely.
China's hegemony need not be malevolent or even involve military force. Three sets of mechanisms could suffice:
1) Two regional defence mechanisms, and one set of mil-mil contacts
- One that ties the PLA together with the maritime forces of Asia littoral (Vietnam, Phillipines, Taiwan, Korea) with forces arrayed out towards Japan
- One that ties together the PLA with Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, with forces arrayed out towards Sri Lanka and India
- While not necessarily mutual ties, at least mil-mil contacts and confidence building measures with the Australian military
2) A common framework of joint economic ownership of all waters and islets amongst signatory countries, with economic proceeds to be divided between the countries on a counterbalancing basis of proximity and overall population.
Subordinate to point 2 is a way for all the manufacturing exporters of Asia to speak with one voice in the global market and bind their markets together in an open fashion. But the maritime compromise mechanism will probably come first.
3) A transparent way for its neighbors to lobby the Chinese government. This last one is critical: right now if a small nation wants a voice in Washington, it is easy--just pick up the phone and dial a lobbyist. This gives small nations ease of access and a willingness to do business with the United States. More foreign policy in the US is determined on K Street than in the Pentagon or Foggy Bottom. But if the Philippines wants to lobby China? Fat chance. This is a bad setup that needs to be reformed.
It is for these reasons why I view Romney’s Asia policy as inherently more responsible than Obama’s policy, since it draws on this point of view to bring China up the level of a global Great Power rather than a contained, angry, and destabilizing regional one. Most of Romney’s Asia policy draws on the views of Kenneth Lieberthal, Clinton’s China Hand and an able and farsighted diplomat who was able to steer the US from condemning Beijing over Tiananmen to lobbying on China’s behalf for the 2001 WTO deal. What's more, given how much Romney has personally invested in China, his policy should be pretty clear, even if not explicitly stated.
What's more though is that China and the US will likely walk this road, but fitfully, and with substantial risk of backsliding if either of their economies fails to embark on a path of steady growth. =/ Keep our fingers crossed, I guess.
  
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Hasn't Romney explicitly pledged to brand China a currency manipulator on day one of his presidency?
Doesn't sound very responsible or far sighted...
But I do agree with the thrust of your post, that the pivot against Asia is hoping for a bit much from the SE Asia nations.
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I think its very unlikely that China will be accepted as hegemon, for the simple reason that China's hegemony would be malevolent as long as they still have border disputes with nearly all their close-neighbor countries (Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan [I only count them as a country because of the US treaty protects them] etc.).
I agree that this would be the optimal solution for the region/world, but I just can't see the US backing down and letting China take over as the hegemon in Asia, especially because China's army is very in-transparent (for example, Japan and Australia [not 100% sure it was Japan] renewed their 'defense treaty' and issued a statement antagonizing China by calling for more transparency in the PLA).
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There isn't much of a freeloader problem in Asia. Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea all have large and modern armed forces. The other countries usually don't skimp either. The US can bring in more ships but with what the Seventh Fleet has, allied forces aren't an afterthought.
There aren't too many countries willing to risk being taken back into the varying degrees of vassalage they experienced from China centuries ago that they're afraid China wants to bring back. More formal and overbearing than what the Prussians did to the rest of Germany before Bismarck. All these countries have moved towards the US; you assume that China will just be too rich and powerful too resist. I don't think China will become that powerful before it liberalizes and loses the urge for that kind of hegemony.
China and Japan being rivals is a relatively new thing in history, the action has been more on the mainland. China does not need to be hegemon for Asia to be stable. Asian stability has historically depended more on China being stable.
What you're suggesting is turning all of East and Southeast Asia into one big Chinese military fiefdom. The Chinese would naturally dominate all these alliances and the Chinese don't dominate the way the US dominates NATO. What would this do? Besides being unacceptable to Japan and Russia, it would be incredibly unacceptable to India. China is a competitor for them in the markets of East/Southeast Asia, Chinese hegemony over everything east of Bangladesh is not something they would be happy about. If the US supported such a thing it would do way too much damage to our relations with New Delhi.
You can hope for fair deals all you want, but with Chinese NATO patrolling the skies and waters, China will get the lion's share of the wealth.
Free trade is pretty good but "speaking with one voice" either means speaking with a Chinese voice or having some kind of new common economic policy bureaucracy, presumably with members from both business and the government, which is a recipe for corruption and unnecessary anyway. If you want Asia's economies to complement and reinforce each other's, free trade and free markets will do that better than any kind of mechanism you can come up with.
The Philippines have a way to "lobby" China. The Philippine Embassy. People lobby the government because the government can do things they can't. The other countries of Asia might as well let themselves be annexed to Beijing if they're supposed to regard relations with China that way.
US condemning Tiananmen was a great failure, the USSR ended because we engaged them morally as well as socially and economically. We've engaged with China economically and more socially thanks to the internet but not so much morally. Let a (hopefully) liberalized China, in a future Asia a hundred years from now, occupy a position similar to the one France and Germany do in Europe. If they want hegemony, well, everyone else around them doesn't want it and the US doesn't want it either, and for good reasons of self-interest.
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Please elaborate more on the Tiananmen part - Im rather curious on this topic (I cant research this on the net Im living in Shanghai atm)
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Excellent and knowledgeable post as usual
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I feel like there are plenty of other options here. The version of Chinese hegemony you're talking about sounds very extreme. Sure, you can say there should be some sort of nice, fair distribution of island-related resources, but once you put China in that kind of dominating position, there is no way that fair distribution will happen. A bloc that includes China and SE Asia puts China in a much more dominant position than the US is in regarding the Americas or NATO. (Europe, collectively, has a bigger economy and population than the US - not true of SE Asia compared to China.) You're talking about very little sovereignty left for those small countries.
The US doesn't have to contain China and prevent it from rising. It can become a very powerful country in the region. But if the US (and/or Japan and/or India) are also powerful countries in the region that gives the other countries options. They still might lean towards China. China would be their most important trading partner, their most important foreign relationship, etc. But if China started making insane demands, they would know they had other friends they could turn to. That provides them with leverage and reduces the level of control China has over them.
I agree that we shouldn't be asking the countries in the region to pick sides in a US v. China rivalry, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to reduce the level of Chinese hegemony a little bit.
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On September 16 2012 22:51 padfoota wrote:
Please elaborate more on the Tiananmen part - Im rather curious on this topic (I cant research this on the net Im living in Shanghai atm)
Do you want to know about the Tiananmen incident itself or how we handled it politically?
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
Subordinate to point 2 is a way for all the manufacturing exporters of Asia to speak with one voice in the global market and bind their markets together in an open fashion.
Interesting. Reminds me of OPEC in a way.
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On September 17 2012 04:59 thedeadhaji wrote:Show nested quote +Subordinate to point 2 is a way for all the manufacturing exporters of Asia to speak with one voice in the global market and bind their markets together in an open fashion. Interesting. Reminds me of OPEC in a way.
Yep. But while OPEC doesn't really have much of an economic reason for existence, the large exporting nations of Asia: China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam--all share similar economic characteristics. All of them
--Use external aggregate demand to guide their domestic firms towards greater competitiveness.
--Intervene in their capital markets.
--Rely on seaborne energy/commodity imports and goods exports
--Face, will face, or have faced huge asset bubbles
--Have economies and politics driven by the construction-industrial complex and/or huge, vertically integrated conglomerates, with banks subordinated to industrial and political users of capital
One of the greatest "trades" that goes on in the world is that the United States guarantees global naval security and free trade so that these five countries can prosper from it. The world would be a much more balanced place if they collectively took responsibility for those two burdens from the US.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
> http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=369213#10
Well, I'm not sure how each of us are defining "economic", but wouldn't you say that OPEC's crude oil production control (and price targeting) certainly has economic reasons behind it, at its most basic level? (on a more micro level, rather than a macro economic level)
I guess one big difference between crude oil and tech manufacturing is that there's really no "getting ahead" in crude oil. Oil producers basically produce the same commodity (depending on the source itself, of course).
Meanwhile, there's a definite "getting ahead" in manufacturing / tech / consumer electronics, where there are clear winners and losers for each sector. I guess China's "assembly" is virtually a commodity at this point, but the consumer electronics production of Taiwan/Korea/Japan are still at a phase where there is sufficient differentiation among competitors that they may fear such unifying policies will undermine their future. (I might be thinking of this from too micro of a level though, and having written this up, I can see -- albeit vaguely -- how a general consensus macro policy agreed upon by all the mentioned Asian exporters can bring universal benefit to such producers)
edit: P.S. nice blog
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I think there are two oversights in your post that tends to make me disagree with you:
1. In the near term China is about to go through economic hardship that is going to be destabilizing internally. While i don't doubt China's GDP will eclypse the US's, in the next 10 years the CCCP is going to be balancing economic re-balancing and lower growth with it implicit promise that one party rule brings wealth. One way to navigate this problem will be to inflame domestic nationalism and antagonize its neighbors. The protesting going on in China is endorsed by the CCCP in part to help the leadership transition go through smoothly.
2. The agency of the rest of Asia; Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines don't want to exist in a world in which China is the defacto Asian hegemon (just like Europe consistently resisted French hegemony before German unification and then Germany hegemony post unification). Especially considering China is not a liberal power. I doubt the ability of the rest of Asia to make a bargain acceptable without the implicit guarantee of American power and I doubt the willingness of China to make a fair bargain in the absence of American power. If America leaves the pacific to China, Asia becomes China's playground and I would expect to see many "punitive" expeditions to expidite negotiations over disputed maritime ownership rights. Think 19th century central america and the US.
China just found its power, the CCCP is incentivized to stoke nationalism, and the internal narrative in China is that China has been disrespected by Japan, the US, and Europe for the last 200 years and its time for China to assert its power. That isn't a recipe for a mature regional hegemon. It will be stability in exchange for the rest of Asia's effective independence. Then consider a China secure in its regional hegemony: i wonder how long the bretton-woods post WWII international system will last....
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USSR ended because what?.. US engaged them morally and economically? What is this, power of mcdonalds? Way to discredit whole post with last few lines rofl
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While I agree with the first two paragraphs, your conclusion that confronting China will lead to two stronger powers is foolish, looking back at the Soviet Union etc. Labeling China a currency manipulator just hurts our relationship, potentially leading to further punitive backlashes.
A series of alliances could stalemate the region. But I'm not sure that is an ideal solution to the complex SE Asian sphere.
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As posters have mentioned, China is malevolent. Issues like border, island disputes, Taiwan have to be settled.
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On September 16 2012 18:49 DeepElemBlues wrote:
China and Japan being rivals is a relatively new thing in history, the action has been more on the mainland. China does not need to be hegemon for Asia to be stable. Asian stability has historically depended more on China being stable.
How new is relatively new because it could definitely be considered a rather old rivalry...
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On September 17 2012 15:05 aznboi918 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 18:49 DeepElemBlues wrote:
China and Japan being rivals is a relatively new thing in history, the action has been more on the mainland. China does not need to be hegemon for Asia to be stable. Asian stability has historically depended more on China being stable.
How new is relatively new because it could definitely be considered a rather old rivalry...
Relatively new. Ancient - pre-industrial Japan was considered not advanced enough for China to bother itself with.
There were no rivalry because the contest was one sided.
Japan only emerged as an Asian power in modern times, prior to that, they were on equal footing with Vietnam/Korea.
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TAIWAN NUMBAH WAN5955 Posts
Your Proposal of just letting China getting its own "backyard" to play around with is stupid.
If right now China is a grumbling rising power with a lot of disputes to settle with neighbors do you really think it will be easier to handle once you just hand them the pacific?
If that would come to pass it would, good job you just bought your "stability" at the expense of everyone around China. I wonder how long that stability lasts when China got his army of vassals and clients to push around the rest of the world.
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Australia at the moment is in a really awkward position. We have a long standing Military alliance with the US and Japan has been one of our largest trading partners for decades. And yet all our future growth seems to be dependent on exports to China.
The situation for us at least has resulted in very contradictory positions from our Defence and Foreign affairs ministers.
Australia looks to increase military ties with China
Updated 9 August 2012, 21:45 AEST
Australia's Defence Minister says the United States will remain the most important ally in Asia.
Stephen Smith has slammed critics who say Australia is too close to the U.S.
In a major speech in Sydney the Minister outlined his priorities for the new defence white paper due out next year.
One of them is to raise Australia's military ties with China to the same level as the economic relationship.
Correspondent: Karon Snowdon
SYDNEY - Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Friday morning that Australia will take a neutral stance over China-Japan territorial disputes of Diaoyu Islands, while pledging to enhance military tie with Japan.
There is also Like some sort of love triangle going on between AUS/CHINA/US.
Not too long ago there were rumours of the US wanting to build a carrier base in perth. Which was shut down rather quickly by the Government. And china has hinted at us to choose the US or Them.
It is a very interesting situation and I really enjoy your perspective shady.
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On September 17 2012 17:22 ShiaoPi wrote:
Your Proposal of just letting China getting its own "backyard" to play around with is stupid.
If right now China is a grumbling rising power with a lot of disputes to settle with neighbors do you really think it will be easier to handle once you just hand them the pacific?
If that would come to pass it would, good job you just bought your "stability" at the expense of everyone around China. I wonder how long that stability lasts when China got his army of vassals and clients to push around the rest of the world.
That is a good analogy. It does seem like shady is talking about some some sort of feudal system on an international scale.
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EPT
