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By Fidel V. Ramos, Former Philippine President
(Speech before the Pacific Basin Economic
Council and the Pacific and Asian Affairs Council in Honolulu,
Hawaii, September 29, 2006.)
First of three parts
IN our part of the world, over the next ten
years 2006-2015, the main currents seem fairly easy to predict.
In its drive for great-power status, China will
continue to reclaim its historical centrality in East Asia. Already
it is emerging as the “second” pole of what has been, over these
last 15 years, a unipolar world.
We may also expect Japan, China’s
long-standing rival, to contest Beijing’s efforts to gain regional
primacy. Meanwhile, the smaller and economically weaker Southeast
Asian states, in self-defense, have begun to take seriously their
avowed ambition to achieve economic and political consolidation by
way of an Asean Charter in the making.
And they are wise to do so, because East Asia
does not lack flashpoints of regional conflict. There are the rival
claims over still-undiscovered hydrocarbon resources in the islands
of the South China Sea (Spratlys); rising Islamic militancy in
Indonesia and in Southern Thailand; and, most worrying of all, is
the unstable Pyongyang regime on the Korean Peninsula still rattling
its nuclear saber.
Of course, the United States, which has regarded
itself—since the 1890s—as an Asia-Pacific power, will continue
to assert its security interests in the region. And Washington’s
first priority has always been to prevent the rise of a regional
superpower that could undermine the US lead role in the Asia Pacific
and, subsequently, pose a global challenge to US preeminence.
Since the end of World War II, Washington has
been the fulcrum of the East Asian power balance. And it is Pax
Americana that has given the East Asian states the breathing spell
to put their houses in order and to grow their economies at the
postwar world’s fastest rate. Over the foreseeable future, the
American presence will continue to be a key factor in East Asia’s
affairs.
How will the great-power rivalries resolve
themselves?
Any of these flashpoints flaring up into
conflict will burst the bubble of Asia-Pacific stability. The
life-and-death question is how the US-China relationship will
resolve itself. And the answer will never be as plain as it was in
the case of older historical rivalries—such as that between France
and Germany in the middle 1800s; that between Great Britain and
Germany, beginning in the late 1880s; and, that between Japan and
the so-called ABCD powers (the Americans, the British, the Chinese
and the Dutch) in the late 1930s.
In our time—given the awesome power of nuclear
weapons—the outcome of the natural rivalry between a hegemonic
state and a rising power need no longer be inevitable conflict.
Consider how the 40-year-long American-Soviet Russian ideological
confrontation died away, without breaking out into a shooting war.
Nowadays, too, great-power relationships are made up of many complex
strands. Not only are there more avenues for contact. In an
increasingly interdependent world their strategic interests often
overlap—as the US-Chinese-Japanese-and-Russian interests do in the
Korean Peninsula. Also, the recent sortie to Beijing of US Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson—to exploit his well-established economic
networks with Chinese leaders as head of Goldman-Sachs in his
previous role—augurs well for a more congenial relationship
between America and China.
Even globalization could become an irritant
Economic globalization has been another positive
influence—at least for the most part. Open trade and investment
have linked great-power economies in ways that can mitigate
great-power rivalries. For instance, Japan’s ruling politicians
may regard China as a strategic rival, but Japanese business leaders
regard it as a valued economic partner. It is by trading with
China—and by investing there—that the Japanese have revived
their declining economy.
US-Chinese commerce, too, is expanding beyond
conventional expectations. In President Hu Jintao’s own estimate,
over 9 percent of all the foreign direct investment (FDI) in China
today comes from American corporation. Naturally, China’s surplus
in their two-way trade—now in the neighborhood of $200
billion—has become an irritant to many American leaders. Already
populist American politicians blame China for the migration of US
jobs and industries.
Over these next 10 years, a China driving for
superpower status, a Japan nurturing a resurgent nationalism and an
America asserting its Asia-Pacific lead role are the realities we in
East Asia must live with.
China reasserting its central role in Asia
Let us elaborate briefly on these points,
beginning with China’s drive for great-power status.
China’s first economic census—concluded in
2005—suggests that its economy is larger than has been estimated.
With an economy valued at nearly $2 trillion (instead of $1.65
trillion) in 2004, China may have already surpassed Italy, France
and Britain to become the fourth-largest in the world—next to
Germany, Japan and the United States. Already, many forecasters
convincingly argue that China will be the largest in the world
before 2040.
China’s political leaders tout their
country’s “peaceful rise.” But most every one else—the
American superpower especially—is hedging against an unwanted
consequence of China’s resurgence from 150 years of decline. In
July 2005, the Pentagon declared that “China’s rapidly
modernizing military could pose a long-term threat to other regional
forces.”
But—at least for the moment—it is the
“soft power” being generated by its increasingly open economy
that Beijing is deploying expansively. China has not merely revived
the Japanese economy. It has become a growth engine for the Asean
states as well. And even Australia’s enduring boom Canberra owes
almost entirely to its export of mineral and energy resources to
China.
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