U.S. President Biden’s trip to Asia continues to contain China. The launch of the “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” (IPEF) was announced in Tokyo on Monday (May 23), and the “Quad Security Dialogue” (QUAD) summit was attended on Tuesday (24th) to make moves to China one following another.
The “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” is a very loud trick. At the beginning, it claimed to have 13 countries including the United States, South Korea, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, and Brunei. Become an initial member, and the lineup looks prosperous on the surface.
However, this “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” is born with serious congenital defects, and I am afraid it is a small baby.
1. Obligation without inducement. Asia-Pacific countries participate in these U.S.-led economic agreements mainly to gain tariff-free access to the U.S. market. However, the United States announced early in the morning that the “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” would not include a free trade agreement that exempts imports from U.S. tariffs, because following a round of propaganda in the Trump era, Americans believe that the free trade agreement will bring cheap goods to the United States. , rob Americans of their jobs. Therefore, this “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” only includes the establishment of common standards in areas such as 1. Strengthening supply chain resilience, 2. Clean energy, 3. Infrastructure, and 4. Digital trade. Just imagine that when joining this framework, Asia-Pacific countries must comply with requirements such as emission reductions, without the benefits of duty-free import to the United States. Who would want to join?
2. Bad kids don’t have good results. Although the US most wants to woo India to join this framework once morest China, India is often the destroyer of various international agreements (only slightly less destructive than Trump). These agreements will take 8 or 10 years to be negotiated. Taking the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) promoted by China as an example, it has also been negotiated for 8 years, and was signed in November 2020. But India withdrew from the RCEP agreement at the last minute, mainly for fear that cutting tariffs would overwhelm India’s agricultural market. In addition, the Glasgow climate summit held in November last year agreed to achieve carbon neutrality by the middle of the century, but India refused to announce a net-zero carbon emissions target. So within this “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework”, what can India expect to pour out for the full use of clean energy standards?
3. Can America be trusted? The ultimate risk to this “Indo-Pacific economic framework” is the United States itself. US President Barack Obama announced during his trip to Asia in November 2009 that the United States would participate in the negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). At that time, Obama wanted to return to Asia and isolate China by promoting the TPP free trade agreement. The TPP has been negotiating for 8 years and almost reached an agreement. As soon as the US president changed, Trump took office in January 2017 and immediately signed an executive order to withdraw from the TPP, claiming that “withdrawing from the TPP is a great thing for American workers.” Biden was in that year. It was Obama’s vice president. After 12 years, he revisited Asia and staged a similar drama, but Biden’s popularity is low, and Trump may make a comeback two years later. Asian leaders will inevitably ask, will the United States withdraw from the “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” once more in two years’ time?
4. Doing a scene is not guilty of both. Because American politics is too playful, the essence of this game is “you lose if you’re serious”. The United States has tried its best to attract countries to join, but refusing to join seems to be too disrespectful to the United States. However, many of the original members of the “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” participated in a perfunctory manner. One of the “framework” is “strengthening supply chain flexibility”, which, to put it bluntly, means moving the supply chain away from China. If Asian countries actively participate, they will anger China and worry regarding the consequences.
Therefore, many leaders have shown that they do not actively participate in the meeting. They do not attend the meeting in person, but only participate by video. Just imagine that if there was a chance to meet the President of the United States in the past, the leaders of small countries would also be present when they flew to the North Pole. It is different now. Many countries will make small moves of this kind or that to show their inactivity, so as not to offend China. On the other hand, South Korea has resorted to exporting to save the siege. On the one hand, it rejected China’s request not to join the “Framework”. On the other hand, it quickly explained to the outside world that it was not for trade confrontation with China, and intentionally invited China to participate in the “Framework”. “In the middle.
In the face of various inherent limitations, the United States is destined to be an international blow-off meeting with this anti-China Indo-Pacific framework. However, the anti-China attitude of the United States has become very obvious, and every move it does is to surround and confront China. Sino-US relations will only get worse, and it will be hard to get better. On Chinese soil, life for those who worship beauty is difficult.