China doesn’t have to outgun the US, just sabotage Asian ‘pivot’

Barack Obama departs Air Force One via the back stairs at Hangzhou on Saturday.

China, it turns out, didn’t intend to snub US President Barack Obama, although the strained protocol when he landed in Hangzhou for a G20 meeting of world leaders last weekend made it look that way.

“This is our country! This is our airport!” an agitated Chinese official snapped at a White House aide in a tarmac row over arrangements for the travelling press corps after Air Force One touched down.

China plays by its own rules nowadays, even on the simple matter of who should provide mobile stairs for Obama’s aircraft. A disagreement over whose set to use — America’s or China’s — forced Obama to exit from a lower door on folding steps.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman fumed at “arrogant and opinionated” Western media for suggesting Beijing had deliberately tried to humiliate him.

But the symbolism was apt. China’s behaviour toward the US during the Obama administration has been marked by a few episodes of collaboration on the global stage — a climate-change accord, UN sanctions against North Korea, the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program — and more regular flare-ups of prickly nationalism.

Small insults, minor aggressions: behind the big set pieces of diplomacy, this is how China has sought to undermine the US superpower and emphasise its growing stature.

It bullies Washington’s regional friends and allies in territorial disputes.

At home, it selectively harasses US investors. And it sends a barely concealed message that American and other Western non-profit groups are unwelcome by putting them under a police regime.

Added up, these aggravations amount to a potent challenge to Washington, mainly because Obama hasn’t found a good way to counter them.

Beijing’s immediate goal is not to be able to defeat the regional hegemon — for all the alarm surrounding the build-up of its armed forces, China still has only a fraction of America’s military capabilities — but to diminish it.

The bar to Chinese success in this strategic game is surprisingly low.

America’s “grand strategy” in East Asia rests on two pillars: its ability to deter potential adversaries, and its assurances to allies that in a real crisis it will be there for them, with minimum delay and maximum force.

All China has to do is sow doubt in the minds of America’s partners about US support, and the strategy starts to unravel.

The next test of American credibility may be coming up shortly.

In Hangzhou, even as Obama urged his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to respect the ruling of an international tribunal that struck down Beijing’s out-size claims to the South China Sea, Philippines officials reported unusual Chinese activity around the Scarborough Shoal, including the presence of what looked like dredgers.

They feared China plans to add to the seven artificial islands it has constructed in one of the world’s busiest waterways. China says the situation in the area hasn’t changed.

Obama this year explicitly warned Xi not to build another military-capable platform over the rich fishing grounds that sit inside The Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

He sounded tough again in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria before heading to the G20. Referring to China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea, as well as its economic policies, Obama declared that “there will be consequences”.

Yet that kind of language doesn’t seem to bother Xi one bit.

Amid a chorus of G20 declarations — inspired by China as host — about the need to boost trade and avoid protectionism as the global economy struggles, the US Chamber of Commerce issued a 116-page report that highlights how China is using national-security laws and other means
to exclude US technology companies from swaths of its vast market.

Strong US rhetoric may even play into Xi’s hands: in the ­lame-duck period of Obama’s presidency, he might figure Washington is even less likely to match words with action and chance a confrontation.

Meanwhile, Xi can look on with satisfaction at the dwindling prospects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Asia-Pacific free-trade deal that is the centrepiece of Obama’s “pivot” to Asia, his signature foreign-policy effort to boost deterrence and bolster alliances.

Both leading presidential candidates — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — have rejected it.

In his book The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia, Kurt Campbell, one of the main authors of the policy in the earlier Obama White House (and a potential secretary of state if Clinton wins the election in November), writes that the pivot was “intended to remind Beijing of US staying power”. And the free-trade agreement, he insists, is its “true sine qua non” — its indispensable element.

Obama was gracious about the airport kerfuffle. Don’t “overcrank the significance of it”, he advised reporters.

He has bigger things to worry about than the grandeur of his descent from Air Force One, such as friends nervous about America’s stamina in the region and a Chinese administration doing all it can to exacerbate their insecurities.

The Wall Street Journal