China: Influence Is Growing In Pacific

[Annie]

This posting is taking a look at a NYT article regarding the growing influence of China, while the US has been working the WOT. (Link to NYT found at site.)Three years is not all that long a period, but it may well be that departments, other than State, should be analyzing this:

http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001604.html

China's growth as a regional power, redux ​

Almost exactly one year ago, the New York Times ran a story on China's growth into a world power, about which I blogged here -- I thought it made some stupid historical analogies.

Today Jane Perlez -- one of the Times' best foreign correspondents, in my book -- has a similar story. This one has no dumb analogies and a lot more meat on it:

These days, Australian engineers - like executives, merchants and manufacturers elsewhere in the region - cannot seem to work fast enough to satisfy the hunger of their biggest new customer: China.

Not long ago Australia and China regarded each other with suspicion. But through newfound diplomatic finesse and the seemingly irresistible lure of its long economic expansion, Beijing has skillfully turned around relations with Australia, America's staunchest ally in the region.

The turnabout is just one sign of the broad new influence Beijing has accumulated across the Asian Pacific with American friends and foes alike. From the mines of Newman - an outpost of 3,000 in a corner of the outback - to theforests of Myanmar, the former Burma, China's rapid growth is sucking up resources and pulling the region's varied economies in its wake. The effect is unlike anything since the rise of Japanese economic power after World War II.

For now, China's presence mostly translates into money, and the doors it opens. But more and more, China is leveraging its economic clout to support its political preferences.

Beijing is pushing for regional political and economic groupings it can dominate, like a proposed East Asia Community that would cut out the United States and create a global bloc to rival the European Union. It is dispersing aid and, in ways not seen before, pressing countries to fall in line on its top foreign policy priority: its claim over Taiwan.

China's higher profile is all the more striking, analysts, executives and diplomats say, as Washington's preoccupation with Iraq and terrorism has left it seemingly disengaged from the region, which in turn has found the United States more off-putting and harder to penetrate after Sept. 11.

American military supremacy remains unquestioned, regional officials say. But the United States appears to be on the losing side of trade patterns. China is now South Korea's biggest trade partner, and two years ago Japan's imports from China surpassed those from the United States. Current trends show China is likely to top American trade with Southeast Asia in just a few years.

China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, as much as threw down the gauntlet last year, saying he believed that China's trade with Southeast Asia would reach $100 billion by 2005, just shy of the $120 billion in trade the United States does with the region.

Mr. Wen's claim was no idle boast. Almost no country has escaped the pull of China's enormous craving for trade and, above all, energy and other natural resources to fuel its still galloping expansion and growing consumer demand. Though the Chinese government's growth target for 2004 is 7 percent, compared with 9.1 percent for 2003, few are worried about a slowdown soon.

Read the whole thing. It remains the case that China's power is only felt at the regional level -- and Perlex asserts rather than proves her argument about America disengaging because of the war on terrorism.

Still, it's worth chewing on.

posted by Dan on 08.28.04 at 05:06 PM

 

[NATO AIR]

I think the administration's focus on the WOT has dilluted its overall message in Asia.

The way to fix this is to make the Asia agenda for the 2nd term focused on improving the political/human/development rights of people all over, from the Phillipines to Vietnam to Burma to Cambodia. America will still be able to get the assistance it wants from the governments of these countries in fighting the WOT, but it needs to remind the people of these nations that America is their friend, their ally, in developing a better future for their nations and America.

just a thought, because the chinese are planning on turning this part of the world into an EU style block (without the kind of massive bueracracy the EU is) that uses its combined economic power and population base to influence important world issues and the economy, and the US should make sure that it retains some degree of leadership and influence in the region, much greater than what it has now, if it is to prevent China from POLITICALLY & ECONOMICALLY dominating the region without firing a shot.