In the Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States it released on Friday, the Joe Biden administration has notably proposed an Indo-Pacific economic framework. The harm that such a politically driven economic initiative can do to the region and beyond calls for the attention of all stakeholders.
Under the framework, the US will seek to set new standards and raise the thresholds for trade, investment and cooperation in technology and industry. All of these actions are targeted at reshuffling the current Indo-Pacific economic and trade cooperation mode with the aim of isolating China.
The framework envisioned by the Biden administration is more comprehensive than those of the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations. Both of which tried to set up a US-centered trade framework in the Indo-Pacific that excluded China.
Yet despite their lower requirements in comparison with the one the Biden administration has proposed, neither of those frameworks actually materialized, not only because of the caprice of the Trump administration, but more importantly because doing so would mean taking a wrecking ball to the existing economic framework in the region.
That framework has proved its worth over the past more than four decades, enabling the Asia-Pacific region to develop into a world growth engine.
Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Association of Southeast Asian Nations members all have close trade, economic and people-to-people connections with China. The US administration should know their nodding to its solicitations that they jump on the bandwagon of the new Indo-Pacific economic framework it proposes might reflect a few politicians’ eagerness to curry favor with it, if not the effects of the US’ coercion and intimidation.
But that does not mean it is the true inclinations of the nations, which are in multiple free trade and investment deals with each other and China. They are not going to tear these up simply to please Washington.
For them, cooperation with China and the rest of the world is largely based on a multilateral system with the World Trade Organization rules as the foundation; the arrangement the US has unveiled is fundamentally a US-centered system and they would have to surrender their initiative, if not their core data and technologies, to the US. The question is how many countries will bet their future on the US sharing the benefits.
Like those of its predecessors, the Biden administration’s bid to impose a new system on the region is doomed to fail. But regional countries should be vigilant to the increasing possibility of the US trying to shatter the existing supply and value chains in pursuit of that goal, since it is the region that will end up paying the price.
Editorial, China Daily
