APEC summit

Donald Trump's election as US president has sent alarm bells ringing across the world. Nowhere more was this more in evidence than at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru. Outgoing US President Barack Obama, in his swan song on the world stage, tried to calm frayed nerves at the meeting of the 21-member group by defending globalisation and free trade for the "historic gains in prosperity" it has achieved. However, he did point out that these gains had not been evenly distributed, which has reverberated through politics. Arguably, it is the discontents with globalisation and free trade deals, blamed by populist rhetoric as responsible for 'leaving millions behind', that led to the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote in the UK. At the APEC gathering, much concern centred on the fate of the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a key part of Obama's 'pivot' to Asia. The concern was triggered by Trump's castigation of the TPP as a "disaster" during his election campaign. The worst case scenario is that Trump's election means the TPP is dead in the water. Incorrigible optimists and Obama himself seem to be hoping however that once Trump takes office, he may retreat from many of his most outrageous statements and positions during the election campaign, including on TPP, which he may renegotiate rather than dump altogether. China, left out of the TPP, which it saw as the US trying to muscle in on its backyard, may not be displeased. In place of the TPP, it is pushing its own vision for free trade in Asia through a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) involving 14 Asian countries plus Australia and New Zealand, but excluding the US. If the TPP indeed does not go through, the Asia-Pacific region will turn to the RCEP, putting the stamp on China's leading role in the region. This development has sparked speculation that we are witnessing a historic shift from the US as the hitherto pre-eminent world power that may tilt into isolationism if Trump's views on TPP and the global climate change agreement translate into policy once he takes office. However, China itself is exceedingly modest about its capabilities and insists it is not in a position to supplant the US as the world's leading power. What Chinese President Xi Jinping said at the APEC summit sums up Beijing's approach: it wants the US not to mount a sudden retreat into splendid isolationism with its concomitant unpredictability and potential for chaos. Instead, China wants the US to gradually relinquish some control and make room for China. But this canvas is still restricted to the region as far as China is concerned. Beijing is reluctant so far to take on the burden of world leadership.
The limitations of the US were glaringly apparent at the APEC summit. The transition in Washington has thrown a lot of balls up in the air, with accompanying apprehensions about what Trump will do. Senior Chinese officials have urged Trump not to walk away from the global climate change agreement signed in Paris. China's 1.4 billion people would lose heavily if global warming were to continue at its present rate, or even accelerate in the absence of international measures to control it. Similarly, Trump's stated anti-globalisation and free trade views trouble many countries, perhaps most of all the Chinese, who have benefited greatly from these developments. Under President Xi, China has certainly played a more forceful global role, for example in floating the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2014 and the regional 'Belt and Road' development plan. It follows logically that China's influence, if not its unchallenged leadership of the region's free trade aspirations, would expand if the US under Trump opts to stay away from international climate change and Asia-Pacific free trade agreements. But China knows, without necessarily buying into Obama's reiteration in Lima that the US remains the 'indispensable' country in world affairs, that an economically retreating US nevertheless possesses more military might than the rest of the world put together. The US may be considered therefore as a colossus with feet of clay, but a colossus it remains nevertheless. Last but not least, one must not, however, lose sight of the fact that although former 'Middle Kingdom's' prudence is legendary, it is still struggling to deal with some profound challenges, particularly the South China Sea dispute, in an effective and meaningful manner.