China’s response to US President Barack Obama’s plan to “pivot” US attention and military power from the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan to East Asia has been remarkably mild.
Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last month in Hawaii, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia that the US would give security priority to Asian allies and friends, as well as US forces in the Pacific. Obama pledged that coming budget cuts would not affect this plan.
Experience shows China often greets such strategic designs with outraged cries that the US is seeking to “contain” China or impose US “hegemony” on Asia.
However, in this instance, the initial response came in a routine statement from Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Liu Weimin (劉為民), who was limited to saying: “When developing state-to-state relations, one should take into account the interests of other countries as well as the whole region, and peace and stability of the region.”
Subsequent statements last week were equally bland, some with a touch of sarcasm, others with a tone of condescension and still others with a murmur of confusion. The intriguing question: Why the subdued pushback?
It might be that China’s leaders, who have repeatedly shown that they do not understand the US, do not know what to make of Obama’s new strategy in Asia.
Perhaps the members of the Chinese Politburo, like many Americans, want to see whether Obama takes action to execute his new security posture.
“If [the US] sticks to its Cold War mentality and continues to engage with Asian nations in a self-assertive way, it is doomed to incur repulsion in the region,” Xinhua news agency said.
Another possibility is that Beijing sees this as evidence of the decline of US power, that the US will soon be confronted with the reality of its economic weaknesses and that it is desperately seeking a way to cover up the consequences of that.
“It was not a good time for US President Barack Obama to attend the EAS [East Asia Summit], given the unstable state of the American economy, and the Congressional supercommittee’s failure on the federal budget,” the China Daily said.
“The biggest challenge facing the United States is its sluggish economy, so China should pay greater attention to the economic measures of the superpower, which is actively seeking a ‘return’ to Asia,” the People’s Daily said in a commentary.
“The United States should depend on its own efforts to recover its economy. If it only cares about strengthening its dominant status ... no Asian country will have time or interest to play the old strategic poker game with the United States,” it added.
Another Chinese assessment is that Obama’s strategy in Asia is intended to support his re-election campaign.
“No sooner had the curtain fallen on the summit meetings in Bali, Indonesia, than Obama sent home the message that he had garnered business deals to support hundreds of thousands of jobs for his countrymen,” the China Daily said. “His country’s struggling economy needs them. His chances of re-election need them. That is why Obama portrayed his nine-day trip around the Pacific Rim as a hunt for new markets.”
The most concrete response seems to have been the establishment of a strategic planning department within the headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army. This must have been planned for some time, but was announced last week by Xinhua.
“The newly-founded strategic planning department has been tasked with studying key strategic issues, drawing out development and planning for the military’s growth, and raising proposals on the general allocation and macro control of the military’s strategic resources,” Xinhua said.
Richard Halloran is a commentator based in Hawaii.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of
RSS