China’s Influence Gap
After delivering his keynote at the Shangri-La Dialogue, the annual meeting of regional defense ministers in Singapore on Saturday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates took questions. But unlike in previous years, the toughest challenge didn’t come from a Chinese military officer. Kishore Mahbubani, a former Singaporean ambassador to the U.S. and a prominent advocate of the view that America should accept that its era of leadership in Asia will soon be over, asked how America could maintain its position of strategic primacy in Asia in light of China’s rise and America’s relative economic decline.
Secretary Gates didn’t give any ground, challenging Mr. Mahbubani to a $100 bet that in five or 10 years, America will be in the same position as it is now. An even bigger contrast from previous years is that a growing number of Chinese officials seem to agree with him. In competitive terms, no one disputes that China’s economic rise necessarily implies America’s relative decline. But Beijing is finding that translating its economic size into regional strategic and diplomatic leverage is more difficult than it first appeared. Many of China’s political officials, military brass and strategists, who were well represented at the conference, naturally assume that its growing economic size and weight in the region should give it proportionate influence and leverage over other Asian capitals. Speculation about the opening of a “window of opportunity” to extend China’s relative influence became feverish from mid-2009 to mid-2010. Chinese officials were genuinely surprised and subsequently incensed when smaller Southeast Asian nations dared to defy China by openly encouraging American involvement in the South China Sea dispute throughout 2010.
Moreover, Beijing is uncomfortably confronting the reality that almost all regional countries choose not only to hedge with America, but are actively maneuvering to perpetuate American strategic dominance in Asia. As Secretary Gates noted in his keynote address, regional military-to-military relationships with Washington are actually strengthening, even as economic power shifts from West to East.