The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, or APEC, has 21 members throughout the Pacific Rim in Asia, Australia, Oceania and the Americas. The purpose of the organization, founded on the initiative of Japan, Australia and the U.S., is to promote free trade in the region. It is a loose association and its resolutions are nonbinding.<\/p>\n
Last week, APEC held its annual summit in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea. For the first time in the organization\u2019s history, no common statement could be issued. The main reason for this was that Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence used the meeting as a platform to argue over their countries\u2019 differences.<\/p>\n
The allegations are substantial \u2013 especially those the U.S. has made against China \u2013 and the incident made even clearer the deep rift between the two countries. Besides old issues such as China\u2019s theft of intellectual property and its economic espionage, the main American charge was that China, with its\u00a0Belt and Road Initiative<\/a>\u00a0(BRI), has created several dependent states.<\/p>\n For his part, President Xi (hypocritically) criticized U.S. protectionism. But the biggest issue for China is that it believes Washington and its allies have worked to contain it, both politically and economically. It is true that the U.S. has engaged in this strategy \u2013 and it is a normal reaction from a hegemonic power toward a rising, assertive power. It must also be acknowledged that China\u2019s attempt to fully control the\u00a0South China Sea<\/a>\u00a0violates international rules.<\/p>\n The American strategy to contain China is nothing new. Access to the Pacific Ocean is controlled by U.S. allies, starting with Japan and South Korea in the north, moving south through Okinawa, Taiwan, the Philippines and Singapore. Indonesia and especially Vietnam are also concerned about China becoming too powerful. Ironically, for all these countries \u2013 except Japan and Singapore \u2013 China is their largest trading partner. In fact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would have created a free trade area between the U.S., Canada and some Latin American countries with Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian states, was also aimed at containing China in terms of trade. It was a flagship project of the Obama administration, though President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the initiative.<\/p>\n <\/a>As a counter to China\u2019s BRI, the U.S. proposes the \u201cFree and Open Indo-Pacific<\/a>\u201d strategy, which heavily involves Japan, India and Australia. It is seen as an association of democracies, assuring the economic and trade links between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The project is especially interesting for Indonesia, the world\u2019s fourth-largest country in terms of population, whose archipelago of thousands of islands separates the two oceans.<\/p>\n India plays a big role in this strategy. During the Cold War, New Delhi leaned more toward the Soviet Union than the U.S.\u00a0This has changed<\/a>, especially due to India\u2019s increased concerns about China. India sees China as a threat to its territorial integrity across the Himalayas, worries about Beijing\u2019s political and economic flirtation with Pakistan and has begun to challenge China\u2019s rising naval presence in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n Sino-Indian tensions<\/a>\u00a0manifest themselves on the countries\u2019\u00a0border along the Himalayas<\/a>. But there are other indicators. Take the Maldives, for example, a group of islands that so far has only held an attraction as a tourist destination. However, islands always have a strategic use as naval bases, or as U.S. General MacArthur once put it, \u201cunsinkable aircraft carriers.\u201d Last December, the Maldives signed a free trade agreement with China. After a visit from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Maldives canceled the deal on the unconvincing pretext that the trade imbalance between it and China was too big.<\/p>\n Another move aimed at limiting China\u2019s hegemonic ambitions is the\u00a0Quadrilateral Security Dialogue<\/a>, a military collaboration initiated in 2007 by Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.<\/p>\n U.S. President Donald Trump and President Xi will meet next week at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires. The antagonistic rhetoric used in Port Moresby could allow both countries to climb down and make a deal. Against all G20 conventions, Presidents Xi and Trump have agreed to meet face-to-face for dinner, showing their intention to come to an understanding. Although such an agreement would only be temporary, due to the superpowers\u2019 diverging long-term strategic interests,\u00a0such meetings will become more frequent<\/a>, so as to avoid escalating tensions.<\/p>\n 22 november 2018,\u00a0GIS Reports Online<\/p>\n Prince Michael of Liechtenstein<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, or APEC, has 21 members throughout the Pacific Rim in Asia, Australia, Oceania and the Americas. The purpose of the organization, founded on the initiative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-11953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-room","tag-25"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Containment strategies<\/h2>\n