Experts: US out to assert dominance over China

Trade war is US pushback against Beijing's growing clout, they say

File photo showing the US flag being flown in in Beijing, China. PHOTO: REUTERS

The unfurling tit-for-tat trade war between the United States and China is a form of pushback by President Donald Trump's administration against growing Chinese dominance, experts said at a policy forum in Tokyo yesterday.

But the scholars also warned of the pitfalls in looking at politically ideological debates simply through black-and-white lenses.

"In discussing US-China ties, it is easy for proponents of either side to retreat to ideological principles to justify their side," political scientist T.J. Pempel of the University of California, Berkeley, told the two-day Asia-Euro Policy Forum on Responding to Crises in East Asia.

"But while the notion of the 'rule of law' is something that the US likes to trot out on a regular basis, the US has been thumbing its nose at the rule of law," Dr Pempel said.

He cited as an example the US' threats on Monday against the International Criminal Court - well-regarded as the legal flagship of the global rules-based order - if it were to prosecute Americans for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.

Experts said the US and China are jostling to set the rules for a new order in East Asia, noting how Washington has been taking steps to assert its dominance over Beijing.

For one thing, it is in the defence of the rule of law at sea that the US is promulgating its own Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy, which is more overt in its aim to contain Chinese expansionism.

Dr Akihiko Tanaka, president of Japan's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, noted serious concerns in the White House over China's development of new, high-tech industries as spelt out in the Made In China 2025 strategy. Concerns abound that the Chinese technology will be used in spyware and defence.

But he warned that the blueprint signalled a very serious desire on the part of China and it might not be so easy for the Chinese to abandon their policies supporting the industrial plan.

Dr Mathieu Duchatel of the European Council on Foreign Relations added that China is "facing the early consequences of its direct and open challenge to the US supremacy", noting President Xi Jinping's declared road map for China to become a leading global power by 2050.

Even then, Dr Chen Dongxiao, president of Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said geopolitics should not be viewed from the "prism of a power-shifting narrative, with the inevitable conclusion of a zero-sum game". If both countries can set aside their mutual distrust to pursue an "inclusive, win-win" model, it will be for the clear benefit of the world, he added.

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on September 13, 2018, with the headline Experts: US out to assert dominance over China. Subscribe