Unnecessary Fussing: China, the United States and APEC
The parents on the global stage of power are bickering and now, such entertainingly distracting forums as APEC (the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum) are left without a unifying message. This should hardly matter, but the absence
of a final communiqué of agreement is being treated in some circles as the preliminary perturbations to conflict between
Beijing and Washington.
Often forgotten at the end of such deliberations is their acceptable irrelevance. APEC as a forum was already deemed by former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans in 1993 to be “four adjectives in search of a noun.” Charles E
Morrison of the East-West Centre in Hawaii noted another view. “Some wag described it as an international dating service for leaders.” On this occasion, the dates
failed to reach a merry accord.
Such gatherings provide distractions and fodder for the global press corps to identify trouble, brewing or actual. They
can also supply the converse: that the state of adherence to international norms, whatever they may be, is better
because of such meetings. But in Port Moresby, coarseness emerged with tartness. China and the United States were
jostling.
US Vice President Mike Pence, who revealed his interest in the summit by basing himself in Australia rather than staying
in Port Moresby, threw down what must have been a gauntlet of sorts. At the Hudson Institute in October, he was moodily accusing Beijing of pilfering military blueprints, “using that stolen technology” to turn “ploughshares into swords on a massive
scale”.
A puzzled Pence seemed to be gazing at a mirror, accusing Beijing of “employing a whole-of-government, using political,
economic and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the United
States.”
At the APEC gathering itself, Pence made it clear that there would be no warming of relations with Beijing. Rather amusingly, he insisted that, “The United States deals
openly, fairly. We do not offer a constricting belt or a one-way road.” China’s Xi Jinping, for his part, was also in a
mood to impress. “Unilateralism and protectionism will not solve problems but add uncertainly to the world economy.”
The forum was filled with more rumours than a village from the middle ages. Chinese officials, went one well flighted suggestion, supposedly forced their way into the office of Rimbink Pato, PNG’s foreign minister, being
most insistent on discussing the wording of a section of the proposed communiqué. A suggested sentence featured in the agitated encounter: “We agreed to fight protectionism, including all unfair trade practices.”
So worded, it was clear what the intended meaning was: Beijing was being singled out as a possible purveyor of unfair
trade practices. These were deemed “malicious rumours” by the Chinese delegation.
At the conclusion of the summit, Papua New Guinea, as host, expressed its concerns through a rattled Prime Minister
Peter O’Neill: the “giants” had disagreed; the “entire world” was worried. Other delegates bore witness to the
Beijing-Washington tension, and were similarly left disappointed. New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern was tepid in suggesting that there were “some minor differences in the international trade environment”. She claimed, as did others, that “it
was disappointing that we were unable to have a communiqué issued at the conclusion of the APEC meeting… but it
shouldn’t diminish from the areas of substantive agreement.”
Former US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is one who is pessimistic about such “minor differences” between the powers, insisting that nothing less than an “Economic Iron Curtain” risks coming down upon the globe. Given Paulson’s stint at that
rogue-of-rogue banks Goldman Sachs, such warnings should be treated with due caution, largely because they fly in the
face of the ideology of, to use Paulson’s own words, the “free flow of investment and trade”.
Commentators such as veteran journalist Tony Walker did not spare the drama, peering into the implications with the keenness of a history student in search of parallels. “Port Moresby may not be Yalta,
nor, it might be said, is it Potsdam.” (Highly tuned, is Walker’s embellishing antennae.) “But for a moment at the
weekend the steamy out-of-the-way Papua New Guinea capital found itself at the intersection of great power
combustibility.” Yet no bullets were fired, nor vessels launched.
The disagreement is merely the consequence of initiatives that are grating on both powers. China is getting bolder with
its global investment and infrastructure strategy, wooing states with no-strings financing. It is huffing in the South
China Sea. The United States can no longer claim to be the primary occupant of the world’s playgrounds, the bully of
patronage, sponsorship and cant haloed by that advertising slogan, “the American way of life”. Building sand castles is
a task that will have to be shared, but bullies tend to eventually let the punches fly.
The result, at the moment, is a trade war of simmering intensity that continues to govern relations between Beijing and
Washington. APEC was meant to supply a forum of diffusion but merely affirmed the status quo. (On January, US tariffs on
$250 billion worth of Chinese goods will increase from 10 per cent to 25 per cent.)
Countries keen to back both powers find themselves facing split loyalties, though that point is often exaggerated. China
knows where many countries in the South East Asian-Australasia region will turn to if the beads of sweat start to show.
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was trying to make the obvious sound simple. “It’s easiest not to take sides
when everybody else is on the same side. But if you are friends with two countries which are on different sides, then
sometimes it is possible to get along with both, sometimes it’s more awkward if you try to get along with both.”
The next show takes place in Buenos Aires, and that November 30 gathering of the G20 promises another re-run of
tensions. On that occasion, President Donald Trump will be bothered to turn up. Again, such a summit is bound to yield
to the law of acceptable chaos and modestly bearable tension.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Email: bkampmark@gmail.com