刘鸣:No need to worry about Obama's East A..

Washington fears the strategic situation in the Asia-Pacific is subtly changing in China's favor, with the United States losing soft power and China's hard power rising rapidly.

Early this year, Hillary Clinton openly attacked China's policies, when she declared the United States is deeply concerned about the peaceful resolution of the "South China Sea dispute" and proposed a multilateral process to resolve territorial issues.

In mid-August, the US aircraft carrier George Washington sailed into the South China Sea and US forces held non-combat drills with Vietnam. On August 17, the U.S. and Vietnam held high-level defense consultations.

The underlying motive of these moves is to expand the US military presence to prevent China from breaking through the first island chain, and to monitor China's actions in its own territorial waters.

The readjustment of US East Asia strategy presents a challenge to China's regional interests, its role in the process of East Asian integration, and its efforts to resolve regional disputes left over by history through bilateral and multilateral channels.

If US intervention in East Asia is institutionalized in alliances, things will get complicated. An old-fashioned cold-war mentality characterized by power struggles and zero-sum games will once again dominate the US relations with China.

As military relations between the United States and Japan, South Korea, on the one hand, and ASEAN countries, on the other, are consolidated, we could see fierce competition for power and influence in Southeast Asia between the U.S. and China.

Some countries may take advantage of US support to encroach on China's sovereign rights. In that case, as relations with neighbors become increasingly complicated, China may face security problems.

Mid-level powers in East Asia may push for closer strategic cooperation with the United States. They may even involve China in crises. If crises multiply and intertwine, China may become pre-occupied and diverted from its national goals.

The main channel for East Asia Cooperation is currently the "10+3" mechanism, but it may become marginalized as the United States increases its involvement, and China's influence may decline correspondingly. The United States could then fill the agenda of East Asia summits with issues like the South China Sea, China's military transparency, the Korean Nuclear Crisis, democratization of Myanmar, the RMB exchange rate, carbon emissions, and so on.

But there is no need to exaggerate the negative consequences of greater US involvement. Southeast Asian nations want the U.S. to balance and moderate the centripetal force towards China. But they fear an escalation of tension that would undermine regional stability. After Hillary Clinton attacked China on the South China Sea issue, some ASEAN countries began to reevaluate US involvement. They were surprised by China's strong reaction and worried about cooling China-US relations, because if the situation takes a turn for the worse, they will be forced to take sides.

Vietnam wants the South China Sea issue to be tackled in an international, multilateral framework. By upgrading its relationship with the U.S. to a strategic partnership, Vietnam wants to improve its bargaining position with China. But it cannot afford to lose Chinese support for its economic development. Besides, China will always prove a staunch friend as long as the Vietnam authorities care about sticking to the socialist road and opposing "peaceful evolution."

The United States will never really become part of the Asian community, for reasons of ideology and identity. East Asian nations have an Asian consciousness and want to build political frameworks that facilitate development, harmony and stability. They avoid interfering in internal affairs and prefer to shelve differences. US goals, by contrast, are to retain its leading position in East Asia, preserve the geopolitical landscape left over from the Cold War, and ensure free access to markets.

The United States is a Pacific country with no territory in Asia, and its interests in the region mainly revolve around trade and investment. It is not in US interests to invest in transnational infrastructure that serves the long-term development of the region. The U.S. has no reason to construct a transcontinental logistics and transportation network, nor does it care about cultivating regional public goods, such as a regional currency that would mitigate losses caused by the volatility of the dollar. The U.S. remained a bystander during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. But China precisely has both the need and motivation to share the benefits of trade and investment and create public goods that serve common interests.

The US East Asia strategy lacks clarity and pertinence. There is no clear understanding on the future of multilateral mechanisms. What are the US plans? To encourage a shift from "10+3" to "10+8" so that the United States can take on more responsibility for regional cooperation projects, or to geopolitically cripple China's influence on ASEAN countries by modeling the "10+8" into a multilateral security summit dominated by the United States. Looked at on the surface, the US strategic readjustment is perhaps just about redressing the previous administration's neglect of Asia.

The core of the new US strategy is to weaken China's regional influence and preserve US alliances in the region. But cooperating with China on regional security and global politics, while simultaneously attempting to contain China militarily, are fundamentally incompatible goals. In any case, China has neither the intention nor the capability to compete with the United States at the strategic level.

On the South China Sea issue, the United States is trying to undermine China-ASEAN relations and China's ability to safeguard its sovereignty. This is being done under the guise of helping ASEAN. But the U.S. fails to recognize that ASEAN countries themselves are beset with conflicts. There is virtually no possibility that the disputes between Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei will be solved in the foreseeable future. And US intervention will only make matters worse. In the long term this latest US strategic readjustment may prove unsustainable.

Given the change in US policy, China should psychologically prepare for an unfavorable environment and a protracted period of instability. But it should face the challenge calmly and eschew any concessions on the principle of territorial sovereignty. China's policies should not be geared to competing for influence with the United States, which would necessarily lead to zero-sum games. Instead, China should continue to engage its neighbors and implement its own strategies based on its national interests, capabilities, responsibilities, and national values.