China losing ground to US in an increasingly ‘bipolar’ Asia: Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index
- New analysis finds the US has extended its lead over China for influence in the region, partly due to a diplomatic recovery from the low point of Donald Trump
- Japan and India have both lost ground to the two superpowers, while Indonesia is one of the few countries to have climbed the rankings
The US was the only major country in the region whose overall power increased this year, according to the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index 2021. China’s overall power fell for the first time since the index was first issued in 2018 having shown “no clear path to undisputed primacy in the Indo-Pacific”.
Meanwhile, Asia was becoming less multipolar as the top two were not being caught up by the next tier of regional countries and territories, the index authors Hervé Lemahieu and Alyssa Leng said.
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“Separated by oceans and vast demographic differences representing old and young Asia, Japan and India have nonetheless registered similar rates of decline since 2018.
India’s rise, despite having expanded its military capability, would take a “decades-long effort, with no guarantee of success”, the report added.
The US leapfrogged China in two measures: future resources (the projected distribution of economic, military and demographic resources) and diplomatic influence.
But signs of America’s growing irrelevance in the political economy of Asia remained despite its improvements, the report said.
The power index measures the ability of states to shape and respond to their external environment and defines power as a state’s capacity to influence the behaviour of other states, non-state actors, and the course of international events.
In the latest index, many states in the region lost power because the pandemic had crippled their ability to exert influence, the Lowy report said.
China’s power was hit by Covid-19 but it also lost ground in diplomatic and cultural influence. It gained on the resilience measure – a reflection of its ability to deter external threats to its stability.
The findings showed that China’s rise, while inevitable, was more fragile than widely believed, the report said.
“Across the range of feasible outcomes, however, it appears unlikely China will ever be as dominant as the United States once was,” it said.
Beijing was now less likely to pull ahead of the US in comprehensive power by the end of the decade, the report said.
Indonesia’s rise
But while major allies of the US hoped that Indonesia’s growing power would eventually “assimilate anxieties about China’s role in the region”, chances of that happening were slim, Lemahieu said.
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And yet, Asean’s ability to forge its own path outside the two dominating powers still came down to the ability of Indonesia, its largest member, to “exercise leadership and project power within it and through it”, the report said.
Indonesia’s rising power was largely due to its economic resilience amid the pandemic, relative to other Southeast Asian countries, despite Jakarta having been hit hard by Covid-19 this year.