ចិនសម្លឹងមើលទៅប្រទេសជិតខាង ខណៈពន្ធរបស់លោក Trump កំពុងឡើងថ្លៃ
Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo have agreed to cooperate more closely on free trade.
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Will Beijing Work With Asian Powers on Free Trade?
Another round of U.S. tariffs looms on Wednesday, with President Donald Trump threatening so-called reciprocal tariffs that could amount to an estimated 20 percent imposition on most foreign goods. In anticipation, China is trying to shore up relations with some neighbors and position itself as a global leader of free trade.
But China is also using the strategic space created by the decline of the U.S.-led global order to threaten and bully other neighbors, such as Taiwan—which might frustrate its attempts to play nice with Japan and South Korea.
Last Friday, Chinese President Xi Jinping pitched his country as a guardian of free trade, speaking to a room of global business leaders in Beijing. The Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean trade ministers met on Sunday, agreeing to “cooperate closely” on a future free trade deal and promote both regional and global free trade, according to a joint statement released afterward.
Chinese state media said that the three countries would also cooperate on responding to Trump’s tariffs, prompting some understandable panic in Washington. But that readout from the Sunday meeting doesn’t seem to correspond with the Japanese and South Korean accounts, which focused on general free trade cooperation. A South Korean spokesperson said the Chinese report had “some exaggerated aspects.”
Though the meeting was the first economic discussion between the three regional powers since 2019—thanks to COVID-19 disruptions and political suspicion—they have all been talking bilaterally.
Japan in particular is attempting what analyst Tobias Harris calls a “double hedge”: an effort to get closer to both China and the United States. South Korea, meanwhile, is grappling with ongoing political chaos and thus unable to take any long-term strategic position.
There is one big test of whether the other Asian powers are ready to work with Beijing on free trade. China applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in 2021, but it has been blocked from joining by firm opposition from Tokyo and other members who are eager to avoid dealing with the issue of Taiwan, which applied at the same time. (Taiwan remains in the applicant stage, too.)
The CPTPP was borne out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a bloc that former U.S. President Barack Obama’s team worked for years to build—only for Trump to immediately pull the United States out of the deal in 2017, when he began his first term. The other parties to the free trade agreement resurrected it as the CPTPP, which came into force in 2018.
However, the purpose of the TPP was in part to maintain U.S. economic leadership in Asia and provide a united bloc against China’s aggressive and politicized trade policies. Now, the CPTPP’s main problem is Trump’s economic coercion, not Beijing’s—and that might mean eventually letting in the superpower that the group was formed to oppose.
China has criticized the United States for the “weaponization” of trade, even though it is an approach that Beijing has used on numerous occasions, such as to punish Norway for Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize and South Korea for deploying a U.S. anti-missile system. Pragmatism, however, might make China look like an appealing ally if the United States pits itself against the rest of the world.
Yet China’s military actions could frustrate its own sales pitch. A sudden round of exercises around Taiwan today—which the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) called “a stern warning and forceful deterrence” against those seeking independence for the self-ruled island—is unlikely to reassure Tokyo or Seoul that Beijing is a force for stability in the region.
China has tested the limits at sea this year, including live-fire drills in the waters between Australia and New Zealand, both parties to the CPTPP.
The PLA’s assertiveness could be anticipatory, if China believes that Trump’s willingness to abandon long-term allies includes Taiwan—but it may also be simply reactive. Taiwan is such an red-line issue in domestic Chinese politics that the PLA must respond to any shift, such as Taiwan’s recently announced measures against Chinese espionage and influence.
Avoidance of taking a maximally aggressive position on Taiwan can easily be weaponized against any Chinese leader, whether a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary or an admiral, by his rivals. Beijing might think that it can play hardball in the Taiwan Strait and softball with Tokyo—or, alternatively, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the PLA may be working with very different agendas.
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