THE past few months have been littered with warnings of United States-China trade wars, technology wars, a new Cold War and even fears of a new “hot war” breaking out.
Yet this is not the first time the US has been faced with a rising Asian powerhouse. Three decades ago, when the “real” US-Soviet Cold War was still in play, albeit approaching its end-game, the US found itself faced with an earlier challenge from a new dynamic economic “warrior”, Japan.
The recent rhetoric from both sides of the US-China relationship closely mirrors what was being said and written about US-Japan relations in the 1980s.
For American commentators and politicians of that time, Japan’s impressive export strategy and high-quality consumer goods favoured by American consumers posed a significant economic threat.
The trade imbalance in Japan’s favour rose to levels considered staggering at the time. Japan’s capital exports in turn threatened the “American way of life” as signature industries and iconic buildings (Columbia Pictures, Rockefeller Centre, etc) were bought up by wealthy Japanese companies.
But, in the 1990s, the Japanese challenge to the US petered out. Two factors were crucial. Firstly, although they bargained hard, the Japanese did make concessions on the economic front – buying more US goods and agreeing to currency revaluations.
Secondly, Japan remained closely tied to US through a Security Treaty. While the most influential prime minister of the 1980s was outspoken about a stronger, more “independent” defence role for Japan, in reality, Japanese dependence on the US nuclear umbrella and US conventional forces stationed in and around Japan remained crucial.
The US, despite the traumas of the Vietnam war debacle, still possessed significant presence and influence in the Asia Pacific region, but it also valued Japan as a kind of regional lieutenant. Both sides, therefore, were willing to temper the economic ‘wars’ for the sake of maintaining the security alliance.
Now the US finds itself faced with a new challenger, both within the Asia Pacific region and globally.
Echoes of the 1980s have appeared. China runs a massive trade surplus with the US, Chinese companies have been trying to buy up assets in the US and the Chinese market seemingly provides as many barriers to US business penetration as the Japan market once did.
US politicians call for strong protectionist action against Chinese exports and populist books predict the coming war with China.
There are two significant differences with the earlier US-Japan case. Firstly, under Xi Jinping’s forceful leadership, China is determined not to falter economically as Japan did.
China, like Japan three decades earlier, is now heavily engaged in negotiations with the US and is likely to mimic earlier Japanese concessions by agreeing to buy more US goods and services.
Secondly, the security relationship is very different. There is no alliance — only military competition. Both China and the US are distrustful of each other’s strategic intentions and the South China Sea, Taiwan straits and the Korean peninsula are potential flashpoints.
US-Japan disagreements in the security sphere were primarily about burden-sharing: how much Japan should and could contribute to maintaining its own defence and securing a wider regional order.
But Japan never explicitly challenged the US regional leadership role and never seriously considered breaking the alliance.
By contrast, although contacts do continue between the US and Chinese militaries, leaders of China and the US do have differing visions of the regional order and their respective states’ roles therein.
Moreover, while the US-Japan bilateral security debate focused on capabilities and costs, US-China arguments are expanding from concerns about the militarisation of the South China Sea and freedom of passage to new threats of cyberwarfare and high-tech espionage.
The US and China are in competition to develop new military technologies and to deploy them in the Asia-Pacific region, but they are also deeply involved in the complex inter-linkages between intellectual property, new dual-use technologies and national security interests.
Regional states, like Malaysia, do not want to be forced to choose sides in the US-China disputes, so the US needs to tread warily but consistently in approaching and reassuring regional friends.
But, China too needs to learn restraint. No other state in modern history — not even postwar Japan — has risen so far so fast, in part because it has been able to benefit from the stability of the existing world order, but the recent flexing of its economic and military muscles in the region is not just a challenge to the US but also unsettling to Asian neighbours.
We can hardly expect the two superpowers, at least under the current Chinese political system, to become “best friends forever”, but it is not impossible to imagine a form of “peaceful coexistence”, to use old Cold War terminology.
Both sides need to take a step back to avoid not just mutually-damaging trade wars, but potentially a catastrophic hot war too.
The writer is adjunct professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong (based in Melaka)