China Steps Up Strategic Tie-Ups In Asia At Expense Of US
Published on Oct 30, 2014 8:11 AM
By Richard Javad Heydarian, For The Straits Times
China's President Xi Jinping may have confidently advocated an era of a new "great power" relationship with the United States, but this has not stopped Beijing asserting its economic primacy in Asia and challenging the liberal world order.
With the US struggling to maintain its geopolitical ascendancy in the region, and the fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement in limbo, China is stepping up its efforts at re-configuring the strategic architecture of Asia.
The opportunity to do so comes amid growing frustration among emerging powers with the institutions of global governance.
The decades-old Bretton Woods system of monetary management is still dominated by the West, which enjoys disproportionately high levels of decision-making powers within the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). China is creating new spaces to deepen its influence which, in turn, will give it more leverage to enhance its position within the Bretton Woods system.
New networks
A striking example is how it has been a primary force behind the establishment of new cooperative networks that fall outside the American sphere of influence.
These range from sub-regional groupings like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to broader pan-Asian platforms like the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (Cica), which allow Beijing to consolidate its influence in Central Asia and strengthen its strategic partnership with non-Western powers such as Russia, Iran and Turkey.
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