Asian Angle | Forget China threat as real disruption is from Trump’s US: ‘old order not coming back’
American unpredictability is pushing countries to hedge more proactively – and, ironically, soften existing tensions with China
For decades, the defining debate in international relations centred on whether China, as it developed into the world’s second-largest economy, would seek to revise the established world order. Would Beijing demand a greater share of global resources? Would it challenge American primacy?
The non-Chinese speaking world watched anxiously for signs of Chinese revisionism, debating the “Thucydides Trap” – the theory that a rising power and an established hegemon are destined for conflict. Enormous scholarly energy was devoted to forecasting whether integration into global institutions would socialise China into rules-based behaviour.
The irony is striking.
As of January, it is Washington – not Beijing – that is openly demanding territorial acquisition, extracting resources from vulnerable partners, and dismantling the multilateral institutions it built. The administration’s National Security Strategy now talks about the “so-called rules-based international order”.
