Easternization: Asia's Rise and America's Decline From Obama to Trump and Beyond

by Gideon Rachman

Both Lees were determined to position their nation to take advantage of the rise of China. Since the 1970s, it has been Singaporean government policy to ensure that the 75 percent of the country’s population that are ethnically Chinese are educated in Mandarin as well as English.

The Singaporeans were early investors in China, and many of Beijing’s high-flying civil servants have come to the country to be trained.

As China has become richer, so Singapore has also become a favorite destination for mainland money that flows into the country’s property market and banks.

Meanwhile, the Singaporean government is positioning the nation to be the major overseas hub for trade in the renminbi (RMB), when the Chin...

Like the Chinese, the Singaporeans have promoted Confucianism—with its emphasis on hierarchy and obligation—as an alternative philosophy to Western liberalism and individualism.

Yet even as the Singaporeans have cultivated China, they have hung on to the United States. Ships from the U.S. navy regularly rotate in and out of Singapore and use it as a base for policing the South China Sea and for guarding the Strait of Malacca.

Singapore’s careful balancing act between East and West reflects the current uneasy balance of power in Asia. Inevitably, it also risks antagonizing both sides.

“We know that China will still be our neighbor in 1,000 years. We don’t know if the Americans will still be here in 100 years’ time.”

Since Singapore’s population is less than 6 million, the country’s attitude might not seem to matter much. In fact, Singapore’s uniquely strong ties to both China and the West—allied to its wealth and strategic position—give it a geopolitical status that far outweighs its size.

If Singapore is seen as accepting that Southeast Asia is gradually turning into China’s backyard, the rest of the region would draw conclusi...

Association of Southeast Asian Nat...

But two of the largest countries in Southeast Asia—Vietnam and the Philippines, both of which have populations of over 100 million—slipped into an openly antagonistic relationship with the People’s Republic in the years immediately after President Xi’s arrival in power.

China’s notorious nine-dash line,

sets out its apparent maritime claims to some 90 percent of the South China Sea—and which since 2012 has been print...

In both Washington and Southeast Asia, China’s island building stoked the fear that Beijing was moving into a more aggressive phase in the assertion of its claims over the South China Sea. Potentially, those claims put China in conflict with almost all the maritime nations of Southeast Asia, including Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

However, it is the Philippines and Vietnam that are under most under pressure. They point out indignantly that some of the waters claimed by Beijing are several hundred miles from the coast of the Chinese mainland but less than a hundred miles from the coasts of Vietnam or the Philippines. If China enforced its claims, it would control vital sea-lanes and gobble up prized fishing grounds—and potentially much more valuable deposits of oil and gas.

Depending on how it chooses to enforce and interpret its nine-dash line, China might also attempt to shut the U.S. navy out of the South China Sea. The Chinese argue, controversially, that states are entitled to stop foreign navies from sailing through an exclusive economic zone that stretches two hundred miles out from their coasts. If China were able to control all the islands and reefs in the South China Sea, it could create a legal claim for shutting the U.S. military out of those waters.14 Given that, according to Hillary Clinton, some 50 percent of the world’s merchandise trade passes through these seas, America has a huge interest in preventing that happening.

many in Southeast Asia doubt America’s long-term ability to deter China’s island building.

Outside the small realm of Asia-Pacific security watchers, it is hard to get anyone in the United States worked up about the possession of an uninhabited shoal on the other side of the world. But in the region itself, these incidents are noted and matter a great deal. So if China plays its hand intelligently, it has a good chance of advancing its territorial claims in a rapid but incremental fashion, without provoking a decisive pushback from the United States.

In the 1980s, after the Filipino revolution had thrown out Ferdinand Marcos, the United States had lost the use of air and naval bases in the country. Now it was announced that the U.S. navy would resume regular visits to the port at Subic Bay.

Announcing that he was ending joint naval patrols with the United States in the South China Sea, Duterte claimed that “China is now in power and they have military superiority in the region.”22 A few weeks later, the new Filipino president visited Beijing and announced a “separation” from the United States, and a new “special relationship” between his country and China.

If ASEAN—whose members have a combined population of 500 million—were able to act as a determined and coherent bloc in world affairs, it would be a powerful counterweight to Chinese influence in Asia.

Yet in reality, China was able to find and exploit divisions within the bloc.

Tiny, impoverished, and dictatorial Cambodia was easily influenced by Chinese money—and became a pro-Chinese voice within ASEAN, helping to prevent it from forming a united ...

Within ASEAN, allegiances waxed and waned.

Within this confusing firmament, the position of Indonesia is critical because it is the largest country in the region and the fourth most populous in the world.

The country’s status as the largest Muslim country in the world, and its proud heritage as a founder of the

Non-Aligned Movement of neutral states,

make Indonesia disinclined to tilt decisively toward ...

As in much of Southeast Asia, many of the most successful businesspeople in Indonesia are of Chinese origin.

By 2015, there were indeed some signs that mainland China was beginning to see itself as a guardian for the millions of “overseas Chinese” living in Southeast Asia.

this was also one of the first times that Beijing had shown an interest in defending ethnic Chinese living outside China itself. The precedent was noted across Asia, and as far south as Australasia.

For Australia, in particular, the prospect of the countries to its north slipping into a Chinese sphere of influence is profoundly unsettling.

The optimistic side of the Australian character has greeted the rise of Asia with exuberant enthusiasm, treating it as an unparalleled opportunity to secure Australian prosperity long into the future.

Their nation is culturally and politically anchored in the West.

“five eyes” intelligence-sharing arrangement

the inner core of the Western alliance and of the Anglophone world

If China can achieve its goals through coercion and the weakness of its neighbors, our independence and autonomy will be irreparably restricted…The states of South East Asia will very quickly bend if China can enforce its nine-dash line and will become dysfunctional like all the other states that surround China.”

White believes that since China will not compromise on its regional ambitions, the United States is embarking on a path that will culminate in either a war or a humiliating climb-down by the United States.

His argument is that rather than confronting China, the United States “should seek an agreement with China about a new order in Asia, an order that would allow China a bigger

“we should seek to ensure that the Americans, unlike the Spartans, do not allow their anxiety about a rising power to lead them into a reflexive antagonism that could end in conflict.”

Turnbull’s Darwin deal was significant because it indicated that—as with Singapore and Japan—Australia’s attitude to the rise of China and the American pivot was more equivocal and uncertain than it might appear on the surface.

“Indo-Pacific” region,

The notion of the Indo-Pacific emphasizes India’s importance and so challenges the idea of a region that inevitably revolves around China.

Indian optimism is, in large part, based on demographics.

While India may one day be a genuine political and economic peer to China, that day is probably at least a generation away.

The development gap between India and China is clear not only in the numbers but also in the streets. China is crisscrossed by modern motorways and a network of high-speed railways. In India, by contrast, the road network is still primitive and, in 2015, some 50 percent of Indians even lacked access to basic toilet facilities—

For all the swagger of the Modi era, the more cautious members of the Indian elite are well aware of their country’s weaknesses and know that, as a consequence, India’s global power is likely to lag well behind that of China for decades.

In other words, China is already making a claim to be America’s peer; India’s ambitions are more modest—to be seen as one of a number of major international players.