America Makes Room for China

Barack Obama cannot take your call right now. Please leave a message? The government in Washington has ground to a halt, and foreign policy has begun to stagger. The U.S. president had to let his secretary of state stand in for him at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bali and at the East Asian summit in Brunei.

John Kerry talked cheerily about his job in Bali. He had once, of course, worked “very, very hard” in pursuit of the president’s job. But that was in 2004, running against George W. Bush. To stand in place of Obama — no, “that was not what I had in mind.”

America’s “pivot to Asia” is taking place without America, which is making even more room for China at the grown-ups’ table. President Xi Jinping, who is making his people nervous with self-criticizing campaigns in the style of Mao Zedong, could have been reminded of the words of that remarkable leader: “U.S. imperialism is a paper tiger.”

In any case, Xi more or less took the lead in Bali and confidently outlined his version of the future in the Pacific to the other participants at the economic summit. “We will build an Asia-Pacific region that drives the world.”* And at its center, of course, will stand China.

China is puffing itself up: It wants to import more than $10 billion worth of goods in the next five years, and it wants to invest more than $500 million abroad. The underlying message: We understand our responsibilities more than others do.

When the summit caravan moves on to Brunei this Wednesday, the conversation will turn from economics to security. It is here that the smaller Asian countries would have liked to have Barack Obama at the table. Several territorial conflicts are festering in the East and South China seas. From Japan to Vietnam, people are counting on America’s help against the overbearing People’s Republic.

On their side, the Chinese are fighting America’s isolation policy and have, in fact, just renewed their alliances with South Korea and Japan. In Japan, China is building a new missile-defense system and, for the first time, stationing reconnaissance drones.

Japan, for its part, is modernizing its military. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a nationalistic hawk, wants to overcome the pacifist inheritance of postwar decades. Japan should become a normal state with normal military forces.

It pleases Americans that Japan wants to play a bigger military role in the West Pacific. What disturbs them is the new nationalism because it gets in the way of close cooperation with South Korea, the United States’ other close ally.

Even the Chinese admit that stability in Asia requires — and will continue to require — U.S. participation. Therefore, no one will make hasty conclusions about Obama’s absence. America has been a Pacific power for considerably more than a century, and it will remain one.

And yet the state of the internally blockaded, weakened superpower is worrisome. “Obviously, we prefer a U.S. government that is working than one that is not, and we prefer a U.S. president who is able to travel and fulfill his international duties,” said Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in Bali.

That hurts. And still — the loss of reputation has not yet become a loss of power. Or, to use Mao’s words again: The east wind is not yet prevailing over the west wind.

*Editor’s note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.