Trump in Asia: The New World Disorder by Jonathan Pearlman

Author:Jonathan Pearlman [Pearlman, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Reviews

Asia’s Reckoning: The Struggle for Global Dominance

Richard McGregor

Penguin Books

After enjoying a royal welcome in Beijing late last year – complete with a tour of the Forbidden City at sunset and a full military parade in Tiananmen Square – Donald Trump declared that he and Xi Jinping had “great chemistry.”

The Chinese president, for his part, was less magnanimous. Xi told his American counterpart that the Pacific was big enough for the both of them – a dismissive line that reflects his belief that he heads a rising power while Trump leads one in decline.

Flattery versus disdain. The remarks neatly encapsulated the seismic shift taking place in Asia.

The United States, the supreme power in the Pacific for some seven decades, is now run by an impulsive president who has shown little appreciation for America’s old alliances. China, meanwhile, is led by an increasingly authoritarian leader who sees his country as a global power with a glorious, millennia-long history that is returning to its rightful place in the world. Neighbouring North Korea is ruled by a ruthless dictator who’s made astonishing advances towards having a deliverable nuclear arsenal. And in the middle is Japan, an American ally and a Chinese rival, a nation that modernised while China disintegrated but is now in denial about the countries’ reversal of fortunes. Even amid a demographic crisis it has no idea how to fix, Japan still sees itself as an economic colossus and is unwilling to concede its decline.

In his excellent new book, Asia’s Reckoning, Australian journalist Richard McGregor writes that the competition between these two Asian powers, exacerbated by Trump’s unpredictability, should alarm the rest of us. “Any clash between China and Japan would not be a simple spat between neighbours,” writes McGregor. “A single shot fired in anger could trigger a global economic tsunami, engulfing political capitals, trade routes, manufacturing centers, and retail outlets on every continent.” That, of course, includes Australia, a country torn between its long-standing alliance with the United States and the commercial opportunities of a rising China.

McGregor is uniquely placed to draw together these themes. He spent two decades in Asia, reporting from Tokyo, Shanghai and Beijing, and was the Financial Times’ bureau chief in Washington, D.C. (he was the bureau chief in Beijing while I was the paper’s correspondent in Seoul, and we worked together in Washington). Drawing on his experience, McGregor has written a magisterial book that combines old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting – he conducts interviews with major players in Japan, China and the United States – and extensive archival research to chart seven decades of relations between the three countries. These relations, he shows, are more complex than suggested by the prevailing view of China versus the US–Japan alliance. He recounts the line by China’s first premier, Zhou Enlai, that China and Japan had enjoyed “two thousand years of friendship and fifty years of misfortune,” and recalls Henry Kissinger’s disdain for his Japanese counterparts, as well as Japan’s constant fear that the United States will desert it. “The

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.