China’s growth as a regional power, redux

Almost exactly one year ago, the New York Times ran a story on China’s growth into a world power, about which I blogged here — I thought it made some stupid historical analogies. Today Jane Perlez — one of the Times‘ best foreign correspondents, in my book — has a similar story. This one has no dumb analogies and a lot more meat on it:

These days, Australian engineers – like executives, merchants and manufacturers elsewhere in the region – cannot seem to work fast enough to satisfy the hunger of their biggest new customer: China. Not long ago Australia and China regarded each other with suspicion. But through newfound diplomatic finesse and the seemingly irresistible lure of its long economic expansion, Beijing has skillfully turned around relations with Australia, America’s staunchest ally in the region. The turnabout is just one sign of the broad new influence Beijing has accumulated across the Asian Pacific with American friends and foes alike. From the mines of Newman – an outpost of 3,000 in a corner of the outback – to theforests of Myanmar, the former Burma, China’s rapid growth is sucking up resources and pulling the region’s varied economies in its wake. The effect is unlike anything since the rise of Japanese economic power after World War II. For now, China’s presence mostly translates into money, and the doors it opens. But more and more, China is leveraging its economic clout to support its political preferences. Beijing is pushing for regional political and economic groupings it can dominate, like a proposed East Asia Community that would cut out the United States and create a global bloc to rival the European Union. It is dispersing aid and, in ways not seen before, pressing countries to fall in line on its top foreign policy priority: its claim over Taiwan. China’s higher profile is all the more striking, analysts, executives and diplomats say, as Washington’s preoccupation with Iraq and terrorism has left it seemingly disengaged from the region, which in turn has found the United States more off-putting and harder to penetrate after Sept. 11. American military supremacy remains unquestioned, regional officials say. But the United States appears to be on the losing side of trade patterns. China is now South Korea’s biggest trade partner, and two years ago Japan’s imports from China surpassed those from the United States. Current trends show China is likely to top American trade with Southeast Asia in just a few years. China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, as much as threw down the gauntlet last year, saying he believed that China’s trade with Southeast Asia would reach $100 billion by 2005, just shy of the $120 billion in trade the United States does with the region. Mr. Wen’s claim was no idle boast. Almost no country has escaped the pull of China’s enormous craving for trade and, above all, energy and other natural resources to fuel its still galloping expansion and growing consumer demand. Though the Chinese government’s growth target for 2004 is 7 percent, compared with 9.1 percent for 2003, few are worried about a slowdown soon.

Read the whole thing. It remains the case that China’s power is only felt at the regional level — and Perlex asserts rather than proves her argument about America disengaging because of the war on terrorism. Still, it’s worth chewing on.