The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Trump heads to an Asia with China emboldened
Experts want White House to reassert American power.
In China, the foreign policy mantra had long been to hide your strength, and bide your time. Cards, in other words, would be played close to the vest, and bets would be modest.
No longer. At the 19th Communist Party Congress, President Xi Jinping declared that a “new era” had begun. It was time for China to show its hand, to put its cards on the table.
“It will be an era that sees China moving closer to center stage,” he said, describing a confident nation “blazing a trail” for other developing countries to follow, a nation that “now stands tall and firm in the East.”
Xi set out a vision of a political system directly opposed to Western values of democracy and free speech, values that Chinese Communist Party media mockingly declared had only brought chaos, confusion and decline to the West.
But is it a winning hand? Is China about to replace the U.S. as the dominant power in the Asia-Pacific?
For an answer, Asia is looking to President Donald Trump, who will arrive on the continent Friday for his first visit, a 10-day trip that will take him from South Korea and Japan to China, Vietnam and the Philippines.
“This must be a wake-up for the Trump administration and officials in Washington,” said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing and a former China director in the National Security Council for presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. “On his visit to Asia, Trump should push back forcefully against the narrative that U.S. leadership on the global stage and in Asia is receding.”
It is a narrative fueled by one of Trump’s first acts on taking office, his withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious 12-nation trade deal that excluded China and was the cornerstone of the Obama administration’s economic strategy toward the region. Western diplomats in Beijing shake their heads ruefully when that decision comes up in conversation.
Trump may have backed away from campaign suggestions that the United States’ Asian allies should pay more for their own defense. But he continues to threaten South Korea, a key strategic ally, with the renegotiation of its free-trade deal with the United States.
Last week, as Chinese media covering the party congress celebrated the triumph of the socialist system over Western democracy, Trump didn’t even appear to realize there was a contest.
He congratulated Xi for his “extraordinary elevation,” and told Fox Business Network that the Chinese president — who presides over one of the most repressive regimes on the planet — is “a very good person.”