How China Is Challenging American Dominance in Asia
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/09/world/asia/china-us-asia-rivalry.html
Every Asian country now trades more with China, often by a factor of two to one, an imbalance that is only growing as China’s economic growth outpaces that of United States.
But another metric of great power influence, arms sales, shows United States’ enduring reach.
Countries that purchase American weapons bind their militaries and their foreign policies to the United States. The imbalance reflects the extent of American military relationships in Asia, which date back to World War II.
Japan is matching China’s rise with its own resurgence, leveraging its economy — the world’s third-largest — to build an independently powerful military and set of diplomatic relationships.
It is attempting to reconstitute an informal and implicitly anti-Chinese alliance known as “the quad,” which includes India, Australia and the United States.
North Korea apparently hopes to one day strike a deal with Washington, allowing it to climb out from a half-century of Chinese dominance.
If Beijing cannot keep even North Korea as a client state, it will have trouble cultivating others.
Sri Lanka might not seem like a geopolitical bellwether. But Asia-watchers have been glued to developments here since 2014, when a Chinese submarine sailed into a port built with Chinese investment.
It marked a new era, in which China is converting its economic power into military power — and, in poorer democracies, into political influence.
This a promising model for China, whose economic strengths naturally fit the needs of small, developing countries. But small, poor allies are less powerful than rich ones, which tend pro-American, and Beijing can be clumsy when dealing with democracies.
Many Asian leaders are eluding the great powers by hedging between them. Few have done so as creatively and brazenly as President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines.