Asian Geopolitics and the US–China Rivalry

Felix Heiduk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367618469
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000429961
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book analyses the ways in which foreign policy actors in Asia have responded to the emerging great power conflict between the US and the People's Republic of China focusing on medium and small states across the Indo-Pacific.

The book offers a much-needed counterpoint to existing analyses on the Indo-Pacific and China's BRI and presents a new perspective by examining how great power politics are locally reinterpreted, conditioned, or at times even contested. It illustrates the policy-level challenges which the US-China rivalry poses for established political and economic practices and outlines how these challenges can be best addressed by smaller states and their societies.

A timely assessment of the power play in the Indo-Pacific with the angle of Sino-American rivalry, this book makes an important contribution to the study of Political Science, International Relations, Asian Studies and Security Studies.

Chapter 10 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

1 Dancing with elephants

Asia and the Sino-American rivalry

DOI: 10.4324/9781003106814-1

Felix Heiduk

‘When elephants dance, the grass gets beaten’ is a proverb often used to highlight the challenges great power competitions or conflicts pose for other states. With regard to Asia, the current rivalry between Washington and Beijing seems to make the proverb’s core message ring ever so loud and clear. Observers have referred to an ‘anti-China mood’ in Washington across partisan divides,¹ based on the widespread assumption that Beijing essentially poses a threat to U.S. interests across the board. Accordingly, the 2018 U.S. National Defence Strategy called for a new focus on ‘great power competition’ with China.² The long-held belief that continuous U.S. engagement with China would bring about domestic liberalization in China, as well as turn Beijing into a responsible, peaceful stakeholder of the U.S.-led world order, currently appears to be widely rejected. Instead, China is now perceived as openly challenging U.S. dominance in Asia through, amongst other factors, its trade policies, its assertive foreign policy in the South China Sea, its pursuit of cutting-edge technology (often at the expense of others), its illiberal, state-run market economy, its military modernization programmes and its growing authoritarianism. China is referred to in the December 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) as a ‘revisionist power’ whose objective is not merely to alter the status quo in Asia and beyond in its favour but to ‘shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests’³. This in turn is widely understood to necessitate not acquiescence but a bold response from the U.S. and its allies.⁴ Hence, many in the U.S. appear to subscribe to the view that the Sino-U.S. relationship has fundamentally changed in recent years from engagement to open conflict.⁵

For its part, China has shied away from such strong language in official documents, but state-controlled media outlets and officials have nonetheless also often struck a more assertive tone. Under the presidency of Xi Jinping, China has been openly aspired to challenge the U.S. military presence in Asia. It has made aggressive moves towards Taiwan and towards U.S. warships in the South China Sea. Anti-U.S.-rhetoric has also prevailed when it comes to what are perceived as sensitive issues surrounding Sino-U.S. relations, such as the country’s territorial integrity (i.e. with regard to Taiwan),⁶ as well as U.S. interference in China’s domestic affairs, for example, with regard to the plight of the Uighurs,⁷ or its crisis-management with regard to the coronavirus outbreak.⁸ President Xi Jinping has repeatedly blamed ‘foreign hostile forces’ to aim for the destruction of the entire political and ideological system that he helms. With regard to foreign policy, Xi Jinping has made it clear that he intends to reinstate China to what he perceives to be the country’s rightful place as a global power and a hegemon in Asia.9 Additionally, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, for example, has argued for a

need to work together for the reform and improvement of the international order and system to make it more fair and equitable, and better serve the aspirations of the international community, especially the large group of developing countries which have grown stronger since the second World War.¹⁰

Chinese academics, too, have argued that the country is now ‘ready and determined to reshape the existing order’.¹¹

China's rise and U.S. decline?

All of this has sparked a lively debate on the future of the Sino-American relationship, which often tends to juxtapose ‘America’s decline’ and ‘China’s rise’. Some scholars have argued that fears over China’s dominance are largely unwarranted as its technological and military capabilities are still significantly lower relative to those of the U.S.¹² Others have used parameters such as China’s growing economic prowess relative to the U.S., as well as domestic instabilities in the U.S.,¹³ as indicators of China’s certain ascent to regional hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region.¹⁴ Notwithstanding the competing arguments over the possible outcome of the Sino-American rivalry, worries about the impact of the U.S.-China rivalry on Asia as a region are widespread amongst policy makers and academics alike. At the 2019 Shangri-La Dialogue, one of the key annual defence and security meetings in the region, senior officials from across Asia expressed their worries about the negative implications a spiralling Sino-American rivalry would have for regional security and stability. As part of his opening speech, Singapore’s Prime Minister described the ‘U.S.-China bilateral relationship’ as the ‘most important in the world today’ and went further to argue ‘how the two work out their tensions and frictions will define the international environment for decades to come’. He also reminded the audience of the devastating impact the Soviet-U.S. rivalry, which he referred to as Asia’s ‘great game’, had on the region during the Cold War.¹⁵ Similarly, Defence Minister Lorenza Delfin from the Philippines spoke of a ‘seismic geopolitical shift that is changing the very fabric of international relations in the twenty-first century’,¹⁶ while his Malaysian counterpart argued that ‘the uncertain relationship between the US and China will remain as an implicit factor in shaping the stability of the Asia-Pacific region’.¹⁷ Scholars like David Shambaugh have also described the Sino-American rivalry as major challenges for the region: ‘Under these conditions, managing the competition to ensure peaceful coexistence rather than adversarial polarization of the region – or possibly war – will be the principal challenge for both powers and all states in the region in the years to come’.¹⁸

From the BRI to the FOIP

The U.S.-China rivalry is most visible not simply in assertive speeches or the current trade war, but in sharply different visions for the broader region. Competing ideas of order for the region have emerged in recent years, with the potential to spark multiple conflicts. For almost 70 years, the system of order in the Asia-Pacific region, often referred to as ‘Pax Americana’ and dominated by the U.S., had not been called into question. This has changed in the second decade of the 21st century. In the context of China’s rise to become the world’s largest economy, which has also changed the regional balance of power in political and military terms, Beijing developed its own ideas and concepts of regional order and subsequently launched its own initiatives. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), consisting of the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) and the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), has become the focus of much debate lately. It is hereby widely assumed that BRI will transform not only China itself, but also its immediate neighbourhood in Central and East Asia, its relations with the U.S., Europe, Japan and other powers, and even global politics and the entire international order. The assumption that BRI will have transformative effects rests on the observation that China will soon become the dominant global economy coupled with the fact that ‘it will, most remarkably of all, have done this under one party enjoying a monopoly on power and practicing hybrid Chinese socialism’.¹⁹ More so, BRI was launched at a time when Chinese foreign policy was seen as becoming more and more assertive, while its domestic politics have become increasingly authoritarian. In the years following his ascent to power, Xi Jinping has cemented his own power grip on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the military and the state apparatus, has repeatedly cracked down on opponents within the party and outside it, as well as successfully abolishing term limits on the presidency, which could enable him to rule indefinitely. With regard to foreign policy, Xi Jinping has made it clear that he aims to restore China to what he considers its rightful place as a global power and a hegemon in Asia. He has pressed China’s claims over the South China Sea and East China Sea, fostered closer military ties with numerous Asian countries, tightened bilateral ties with dozens of countries worldwide, forged new multilateral institutions (i.e. Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank or AIIB, Silk Road Fund, New Development Bank) and forums, as well as introducing new concepts such as his ‘new type of international relations’. Also, China increasingly promotes its own developmental path as a model for other nations. China’s newfound foreign policy assertiveness, its growing impact on global economic development and its proclaimed return to global power status are often regarded as outright challenging U.S. power and dominance regionally and internationally. To some observers, the national restoration of China is even ‘no longer a blueprint for a single nation’; instead ‘Beijing appears to have committed itself to remaking the whole world’.²⁰

While observers seem to agree on the BRI’s general transformative effects in China...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Dancing with elephants: Asia and the Sino-American rivalry
• 2 From globalisation to fragmentation? The erosion of confidence in the Asia-Pacific
• 3 Many players, many layers: the Indo-Pacific long game
• 4 “Making Multilateralism Matter”: middle powers in the era of the US-China competition
• 5 Security order and state transformation in Asia: beyond geopolitics and grand strategy
• 6 Reflecting on US-China rivalries in post-conflict Sri Lanka
• 7 India, Indo-Pacific coalitions and China: from alignment to alliance?
• 8 Major power competition and Southeast Asia: institutional strategies and resources
• 9 From appeasement to soft balancing: the Duterte administration’s shifting policy on the South China Sea imbroglio
• 10 Beyond strategic hedging: Mahathir’s China policy and the changing political economy of Malaysia, 2018-2020
• 11 Midfield or margin? Myanmar and neighbours in the game
• 12 The role of domestic political constraints in navigating great power relations: the case of South Korea
• Index