Denny Roy
Nascent great power China is seeking greater strategic influence within its neighborhood. Although Beijing attempts to cloak its agenda with benevolent-sounding gobbledygook such as Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy, the PRC government has two clear objectives. The first is to gain ownership, acknowledged by the international community, over all the disputed territory that China claims. That includes a large swath of the earth’s surface stretching from the Yellow Sea through the East China Sea and Taiwan to encompass most of the South China Sea.
Second, Beijing aims to establish such leverage over the governments of nearby countries that none implements any major policy that Beijing opposes–such as security cooperation with the US or anything that reflects negatively on the Chinese Communist Party leadership.
Some of Beijing’s aspirations are irreconcilable with US strategic primacy in the western Pacific. As China keeps pushing, what kind of resistance is it likely to meet from the new US government? Due to several factors, Trump II will be prone to presiding over significant slippage in America’s position of strategic influence in the Asia-Pacific region.
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