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Sino File | Stuck between a US and China heading for war, Asia’s no safe place to be
- Imagine a dragon and an elephant fighting in your living room and you have an idea of the Apec summit in Papua New Guinea
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Imagine how frightening it would be if a dragon and an elephant were fighting in your living room.
That’s exactly how it felt when the world’s two largest economies and most influential nations clashed at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit last weekend. For the first time in its 25-year history, the summit failed to agree a formal joint statement – and the US-China confrontation was to blame.
“You know, the two big giants in the room.” That was the response of summit chairman Peter O’Neill, the prime minister of host nation Papua New Guinea, when asked which of the 21 members of the group could not reach agreement.
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The meeting was marked by competing visions from the US and China, which are now embroiled in a full-blown trade war that is slowly corroding the very multilateral trade order that Apec was established in 1989 to protect.
The disagreement over the joint statement reflects a hardening of the conflict between them, with each side deploying aggressive, uncompromising rhetoric reminiscent of the cold war era.
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It even prompted the usually diplomatic Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to warn bluntly that nations in the region might be forced to choose sides.
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