What do Asia-Pacific states want from the China-US relationship?

In recent years, relations between China and the United States have deteriorated precipitously. Wedges have been driven into their relationship by many issues, and as a consequence, nearly every bilateral issue has become securitised. Both countries increasingly cast the other as an adversary, as reflected in their national security documents, statements, and media.

In a new report, “Regional End States and Beyond”, Manpreet Sethi, Frank O’Donnell, and Joel Petersson-Ivre, discuss how Asia-Pacific states view the China-US relationship. Based on interviews, writings, and interactions with policy practitioners and analysts from the Asia-Pacific, China, and the United States, they analyse the structural preferences of regional actors as they pertain to regional stability, and frame these preferences in terms of what they reveal about the preferred end-states of regional actors; that is, the long-term roles they wish China and the United States would play in the region.

The report, which was published in September 2024, was discussed during a live webinar. Two of the report authors, Manpreet Sethi and Joel Petersson-Ivre introduced the report, and discussed its findings with Zack Cooper, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; Melissa Conley Tyler, Executive Director of Asia-Pacific Development, and Professor Yu Tiejun from Peking University. The discussion was moderated by APLN Policy Fellow Tanvi Kulkarni.

The panelists discussed different views of primacy, unipolarity, and trust-building, and identified a need to better understand competing views of multipolarity in the region.

Webinar transcript

Note: This transcript has been automatically transcribed using AI-assisted software, and lightly edited for clarity. Any quotes should be checked against the original recording.

Tanvi Kulkarni: Good morning and good evening to all our participants joining from different corners of the world. My name is Tanvi Kulkarni from the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network, and I am delighted to be your host and moderator for today’s roundtable on “What do Asia-Pacific states want from the US-China relationship. A very warm welcome to each one of you. It’s wonderful to see participants from various locations sharing this virtual space. Before we begin our discussion on the topic, I would like to briefly introduce our organization and our project. The Asia-Pacific Leadership Network is an independent, not-for-profit organization and network of over 160 former, serving, and emerging political, military, diplomatic, and academic leaders from 22 countries across the Asia-Pacific.We are registered and headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. APLN’s work addresses regional defense and security challenges, with a particular focus on reducing nuclear weapons risks. In September 2022, we launched the “APLN Asia Dialogue on China-US Relations,” which brings together senior experts and scholars from China, the United States, and the wider Asia-Pacific region to discuss China-US relations within a regional context. The project aims to plug knowledge gaps and increase the understanding among regional stakeholders on how complex regional dynamics impact China-US relations. We are grateful to the Carnegie Corporation of New York for supporting this project.

So today we’ll be discussing a new report from the project, “Regional End States and Beyond,” which is authored by Manpreet Sethi, Frank O’Donnell, and Joel Petersson Ivre, based on interviews, writings, and interactions with policy practitioners and analysts from the Asia-Pacific, China, and the United States. The report explores how Asia-Pacific states view the China-US relationship.

We’ll be exploring key insights and findings from the report and also hearing from three experts about their research on the topic. We have an excellent panel, including two of the authors of the report, Dr. Manpreet Sethi, who is the Senior Research Advisor at APLN and also a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Airpower Studies in New Delhi, India, and Joel Petersson Ivre, who is a Policy Fellow at APLN based in Seoul. Joining us as discussants today are foreign policy experts, Dr. Zack Cooper, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Melissa Conley Tyler, Executive Director of the Asia Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defense Dialogue, and Professor Yu Tiejun from Peking University, who is currently based in Stanford.

We’ll begin with Manpreet and Joel introducing the report and their findings for about seven minutes each. And then we’ll have remarks from our three discussants for about five to six minutes. And after that, we’ll open the floor for questions and discussions. This is an interactive session so feel free to use the chat box and share your questions and comments and connect with the panelists.

And I’m really looking forward to a lively discussion. So, without further ado, let’s kick off. Manpreet, the floor is yours.

Manpreet Sethi: Thank you very much Tanvi and hello to everyone. We are all joining from different time zones and I do understand these are difficult time zones for many of us. So thanks to our three discussants for joining us today and of course to the rest of the audience with whom we are very happy to engage on this report that Joel, Frank and I have published just recently.

So as Tanvi has already explained, why we are meeting today, the focus is this report based on the project that we convened as the Asia Dialogue. The idea was to engage with policy practitioners, experts ,officials still in service trying to find out how they are looking at the China-US relations.

So we all understand that we are in times where we both China and U.S.  are looking at each other from the adversarial prism. All of the documents that you see coming out of US and China today are looking at each other as challengers and there’s lack of dialogue between the two of them.

In fact, communication is at a real low which is leading to perception gaps. These perception gaps then are making each side assume the worst of the other and  the kind of capability buildup that is being seen is getting them them to believe that this is all meant for certain kind of action against them.

So the intent is certainly very much in question, leading to accretion of military capabilities and feeding the negative cycle once again, which is leading to exacerbation of the security dilemmas. I think my first four bullet points are very well understood by everyone in today’s times, which is then leading to an impact on the Asia Pacific.

In fact, as part of this Asia dialogue,  what we did was to have sub regions as part of Asia. Since it’s such a large region, we divided it into four sub regions. Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, South Asia and the Pacific. And we try to look at it from the regional point to get to some amount of granularity.

Of course, even within regions, there are different perspectives that come out. But the general sense that we got from each region basically revolves around three end states that could emerge from the China-US relations. Before we discuss that though, it needs to be said that there’s a feeling of being caught in bloc politics. There is a concern that  the Asian states could be sucked into those bloc politics by the actions that are being taken at the level of U.S and China. .

There is an acute security concern in several of the regional countries, especially from the context of regional stability. In fact, we asked a common question to all our interviewees about what do they think of regional stability. And except for suggesting that they don’t want conflict, there were different views on regional stability itself that came out from those that we interviewed.

The interviewees were also from China and the U.S. , so we were trying to get perspectives from all three ends in order to come to a some kind of a picture on what we think that the regional states want. In order to understand their preferences for end states, we use this concept to frame our discussions.

Even though we very well understand that end state is really a dynamic state even when at the end of the two world wars, or at the end of the Cold War, when one felt that you were arriving at an end state, there were often transitions from one world order to another. But just to help us frame our discussions about the policy goals of the regional states, we use the concept of end states.

There are three end states that we were able to arrive at based on the discussions that we had. So the views coalesce around these three broad ideas of what the states in the region would like to have — US primacy, China primacy, and no primacy with multipolarity as the anchor of the regional order.

So I’ll just spend very brief minutes on the three aspects of these end states that I want to highlight, and then I’ll pass it on to Joel to speak more about the implications of these end states.

So what were some of the regional views on U.S. primacy? Obviously the allies and the friends and the partners, see the US as a positive force in the region.

They see it as positive, particularly to contain concerning Chinese behavior, because some of the aspects of China’s assertion and aggressiveness, particularly in the region, this is seen as being countervailed by the presence of the US and its desire or its ability to have primacy in the region.

US primacy also seen by some countries, particularly India, as a means of realizing a multipolar region. So India’s desire is to have multipolarity and in order to make that feasible, it sees that the US will be able to play that role to establish the multipolarity. However, some in Southeast Asia feel that there is a US overreach in pursuit of primacy and the US doesn’t have the will or the capability to achieve this primacy. Rather, they feel that it ends up constraining their economic policies, which then provokes China. And a good example of this I found was the de risking strategy of the US, where the US is asking its allies to follow de risking strategies against China and their concern then is that this has not only just economic costs, but it also has political costs.

So both South Korea and Indonesia, for instance have mentioned this as becoming problematic. Even though they want US primacy, they find that on the economic front their relationship with China gives them several benefits, which get compromised when the US persists with the idea of primacy of its own and asks for de risking.

Meanwhile, the Pacific states feel that the rivalry so created between US and China then distracts from other urgent security concerns such as climate change. So we heard from the Pacific states, for instance, that if China is the leader on clean technology, and when the US takes steps that forces others to go slow on that, it harms the climate more, which for them is an existential risk. This then  becomes a matter of concern for their region.

The second end state we saw was Chinese primacy. Not many in Asia Pacific like the idea of Chinese primacy. Even though they are happy to engage economically with China, they find that from the security perspective, they are more comfortable with the US The Chinese themselves have never said “Chinese primacy” in so many words. They’ve never said that they are looking for primacy of their own, but they’ve always framed it as a peaceful rise or a desire for multipolarity. But there’s widespread skepticism about China’s claims to peaceful rise and desire for multipolarity amongst several states, who have pointed out to the assertive and aggressive behavior of China in Taiwan, against India, and the South China Sea. So the claims that China makes get countered by some of the actions that you see on the ground. As I mentioned, some degree of economic outreach from China is seen to be acceptable by many countries in the Asia Pacific, but they want to balance this out with the influence of the US to prevent a dominance of China. So, for Chinese primacy, that’s generally the thought process that we found.

And the third end state is the preference for multipolarity. So what the states say they want is no primacy of either major power. And the ability to pick and choose and hedge their bets of one against the other.

But there’s a difference on the idea of multipolarity itself. What kind of a multipolarity? Would all poles be equal? India sees itself as one pole among many others. So it is looking for having several poles in Asia Pacific with each one having its own strength.

Indonesia has suggested that the pole should be the ASEAN. So in Southeast Asia, we see them looking at it more as a collective mechanism becoming the pole rather than only different countries being the poles. In the case of the Pacific States, they would prefer a managed cooperative detente between US and China. So, no primacy for either, but some kind of a detente that the two are able to achieve so that some of the more direct risks for them get taken care of.

And rather interestingly, South Korea mentioned the concept of strategic autonomy, where it would have its allied relationship with the US, but nevertheless be able to exercise autonomy in the kind of strategic decisions that it wants to take. And here particularly, we found on, for instance, the issue of the semiconductor industry, where South Korea is a major player with China, it felt that while it’s an ally of the US and it is understanding the concerns of the US, it definitely has a relationship with China that it wants to continue. So therefore, they are in favour of a strategic autonomy that would help them shape their own foreign policy. So, I will stop here with having explained the three end states and Joel will take us further.

Joel Petersson Ivre: Yes. Thank you, Manpreet. And just to make it a bit clear how we are looking at these end states, we made one of these neat two- by- two tables. And I think it’s not surprising that we found no common preference for which end state can best maintain regional stability. I should also make it explicit that in this report, we are not arguing for one of these end states over another.

Even though I think both myself and my co authors have their own preferences of what we would like to see in the region. There is no such thing as a perfect end state, and each end state requires specific policy approaches to maintain stability and avoid conflict. We have sketched some recommendations in the report but these are very much open for debate and challenge.

Overall, I would say we find very few stated preferences for competition, which is when both China and the US try to seek primacy. But some revealed preferences: some states generally say they want to avoid competition or the negative externalities that arise from it. But some try to exploit it as well. And for these actors, we think it’s important to understand how to avoid spurring further confrontation or making competition veer into confrontation between China and the United States, and to see how they can handle the consequences of confrontation. We bring up Japan and Indonesia as two examples.

So playing into China-US competition can be lucrative, but it’s not a risk free strategy and it can come at a cost. And in all end states, but particularly in a competitive end state, we believe that China must display greater strategic empathy. This goes back to what Manpreet just explained. Many of our interviewees phrase this as China having a “communication problem”.

And it’s something we heard from senior Chinese people that we’ve interacted with as well, that China is not matching its words and its actions. The United States in competition also needs to show strategic restraint, and that’s especially on issues of very high sensitivity to China.

I would say, however, that the majority opinion is split into the below two preferences here. And especially if we look in the security domain. For US allies, they want to see a dominant US and a conceding China or a China that is made to concede. But countries that are not US allies tend to argue for a multipolar system or some form of managed detente.

There’s very little appetite for Chinese dominance in the region, which reflects, I think, China’s relatively weaker security ties, which Manpreet just explained. So to the US allies, we would ask, how do you take into account Chinese policy preferences if you maintain stability in the region by having the US remain dominant. How can you make China accept that kind of state of affairs like it more or less did from the 90s until quite recently? If you ask me, I think it’s very hard, if not impossible, but there would at least need to be some form of assurances aimed towards China.

And again, many states and actors say that they actively seek and promote multipolarity. And the recent BRICS meeting where the leaders of India and China said that they would work together for a multipolar region is a point in case. But multipolarity here would mean that no great power seeks dominance.

Then the key question is how can you ensure that neither great power tries to take advantage of the other’s restraint. If you look at it from the Chinese point of view, this is what they see is happening, that China is trying to advance in multipolar region and the US is not conceding primacy.

You can challenge that view, but it’s fairly prevalent in China. So this this could become a key issue as the region inevitably seems to actually be moving towards multipolarity. Because whatever preference states in the Asia Pacific have is fairly uncontroversial to say that the world is moving towards multipolarity and especially the Asia Pacific.

So then we come to this issue of how to actually manage this multipolarity and this is something that we’re going to look into much more closely in the next part of this project. China and India, they both say that they want a multipolar region, but even if we take them at their word on that, Do they mean the same thing when they speak of multipolarity?

I don’t think so. Surely the Chinese understanding of multipolarity is very different informed by China’s particular strategic experience and its location and as opposed to the Indian understanding, which is very different. And that in turn is very different to how ASEAN states would view multipolarity or how other countries in Northeast Asia, for example, would view the concept.

Manpreet mentioned the strategic autonomy of South Korea. This is also not necessarily a majority view in South Korea. You can debate that. We published a report that spoke specifically about this, which promoted this view. But It’s far from easy to say that view is exactly what we see in ASEAN and so on.

So finally, this framework underlines the importance of analyzing end states as the outcomes of the interaction between Chinese and US approaches and also modulated by third party actors. Desired end states certainly be articulated by individual actors. You see this in the US policy documents, they articulate certain end states, they use that term. But they are produced by the interaction of different actors. So our framework urges policymakers to consider what they see as an ideal Asia Pacific regional security system over the next decade. And both Washington and Beijing need to consider the role of the other and third parties in that system.

It urges both China and the US to assess the largest differences between regional preferences and their own approaches to the region. And finally, it highlights the agency of third party actors and the expectations and responsibilities that these hold in shaping future regional end states for the worse sometimes, but also we believe, for the better.

So I’ll stop here. Thanks.

Tanvi Kulkarni: Thank you very much Manpreet and Joel for an interesting presentation, giving us an overview on findings and insights from the project and particularly framing the preferences of regional actors with regard to regional stability and the US- China relations through this idea of end-states, and the implications of each of those end-states, which you have managed to capture in the report.

I want to now turn toward our three discussants, starting with Melissa Conley Tyler. Melissa, can I ask you to comment on the value of analyzing end states as the outcomes of the interaction between Chinese and US approaches in the Asia Pacific region? And I want to refer to a recently published report by your organization titled, “What does it look like for Australia to Navigate a New Era of Economic Statecraft in the Indo-Pacific?”And in that context, also ask you, which of the four end states identified in this APLN report would be most conducive to Australia’s economic statecraft?

Melissa Conley Tyler: Thank you Tanvi. Thank you APLN and particular thanks to Manpreet, Joel and Frank for producing this excellent paper. I found the discussion of end states very illuminating. I thought the report shows very well the spectrum across different sub regions and across different countries. And I particularly liked the way it is keeping us all honest by showing unintended consequences. If you’re a country that is trading off US China conflict for some short-term gain, is that in your long-term interest?

So, I think it was a wonderful prism to use. I think Australia is an interesting case in that – and you won’t hear many people say this – but I think Australia can cope just fine in any of those four quadrants, which is interesting. Australia can actually probably cope better than most countries with a China dominated region, whether we want that or not.

We have a trade surplus, we have no historical grievances, we have a big Chinese Australian population. There are lots of things that actually we could use very well if that was what was required. But, I think Australia’s stated preference is much more around other parts of the quadrant.

We can cope with multipolarity. We can even cope with managed US -China conflict, I think, within guardrails. But our revealed preference is US primacy. I think that’s interesting because it shows that it’s not just our interests that are at play. It’s also sentiment. It’s also the way we see ourselves in the world.

And historically, Australia is the high watermark of British imperialism. We’re only here because Western countries dominated Asia’s seas. And from that perspective, we’ve only ever known a world that looks like that. We’ve never, as a modern nation, known a strong China. We’ve never known a strong India.

This is a very new and discomforting time for Australia. So because of that, what we’ve been focusing on more than anything is preserving US dominance because it’s the world we’ve known and are comfortable with. I think if you put in those terms, you look at something like AUKUS – the Australia, US, UK procurement deal – being very clear what it is – if you look at its essence, it’s Australia paying an absolute buck load of money – AU$368 billion to US manufacturers – to keep the US invested in the region and the UK is just a lucky beneficiary of this. So that’s what we’ve actually been doing. That brings up your question, Tanvi, around the economic statecraft side, yes?

I think in the past, Australia had a very clear view that we separated economy and security. That, we did economy with a rising Asia and China, which has been fantastic for our living standards. But the US was always a security partner and we always felt very comfortable with that.

So we kept those two apart, which is a sort of having your cake and eating it too sort of situation. What’s become really clear to Australia is that you can’t keep that division so neat. Partly that was felt from Chinese economic sanctions on Australia in 2020, when we’d been particularly clumsy in how we managed the relationship and we got a huge amount of economic punishment on anything that China didn’t desperately need.

China wouldn’t hurt itself by sanctioning iron ore, but was happy to put trade restrictions on wine and beef and rock lobsters, for example. At the same time, I think we’ve seen the US changing its attitude. So the US with the Inflation Reduction Act, and its focus on supply chains, and on critical minerals, again has changed that discussion.

It’s not just economy, security, domestic, international, they’re all mixed up. So Australia now has its own Inflation Reduction Act called the  . And we’re working very closely with US on things like critical minerals. In some ways, you can say that’s strange, because what actually enabled Australia to get through the Chinese trade restrictions was a global open market. That’s why we managed. And we weathered the restrictions particularly well because we were able to find other markets. Often that was in competition with US suppliers who jumped in and made the best of our misfortune. So just to finish up, that quick discussion of the Australian policy landscape shows that this is still actually very contested.

In many countries, policy is still being played out. There are different voices with different views who are emphasizing different end states and the positives of those for countries. I see for most countries that it’s still an open field as it were. They are watching US and Chinese behavior. And where they end up in their policy will depend upon how the US and China behave.

Now, I’m a realist. I expect great powers to act like great powers. That’s what they do. But the question is how much they temper their impulses and make themselves attractive to countries in the region. Is China more, or less a responsible great power? Does the US more, or less bolster rules in the system or decide to be a rogue actor? Those matter very much to the region. So, I’m looking forward very much to hearing Prof Yu Tiejun and Zack talk more about US and China approaches.

Tanvi Kulkarni: Thank you so much, Melissa, for your remarks. Australia really is an interesting case, right?Not just as a core US ally, but also a big important player in the region. So thank you so much for addressing those questions, Melissa. I’ll move on to Professor Yu. Professor you wrote for APLN two years ago, the very first paper of this project as it were, about top down diplomacy in the US China relationship. And you said in that report and, I quote, “China realizes that mistrust, misunderstanding, and misperceptions create big problems for current China-US relations, and China does want to build trust.” You have personally taken part in many scholarly exchanges toward trust building and sought to invigorate academic exchanges, even as the US China relationship has grown more contentious in the recent years. I’m keen to hear from you how to go about resolving some of the trust issues that the report identifies. For instance, the report says, “in Washington and in the region, there is much doubt about China’s intention to advance a multipolar region and not to seek primacy.In Beijing, there is fear that the US will seek to contain China, even as many countries in the region doubt the US ability to do so.” Professor Yu, the question to you is, how can these perceptions be reconciled?

Yu Tiejun: Thank you very much Tanvi, and also to APLN for having me here. It’s very nice to see all my friends online.

I’m now at Stanford as a Visiting Scholar China Policy Fellow. Yes, I’m very honored to author the first article in this project which was  regarding ,trust which I think is most lacking nowadays, especially between the United States and China. I’m working on the scholarly exchange between the two countries even though it’s very difficult to do now. That’s because I think the academic exchange is the bottom line we can do to keep the bilateral relations intact. Scholars are more rational, relatively speaking, and, have more experience in other countries and they want to see stable bilateral relations mostly. That’s why I work on this.

The problem now between China and the United States is lack of trust, distrust, misperception, and misunderstanding, I think it is one of the biggest problems. I am here at Stanford – I think the most  beautiful and it might be (one of the) best universities to understand China. Still, I can feel the chilly atmosphere of the bilateral relations. Leave alone Zack’s Washington, where I think there might be more severe problems. So how to tackle this problem? I think it will last for quite a long time but still we can do something on the Chinese side.

I dont think China wants to be the hegemon or to seek primacy. . Officially, I think always China advocates a multipolar system in Asia and around the world. And also, I think the Chinese leadership notices the problem of misperception between these two countries. That’s why Xi Jinping always emphasizes th need to ” fasten the first button”. He uses a word that means to know better and to avoid the misperception of the other side. So we promote the misperception issues to a higher policy agenda in the bilateral relations.

I think the report is a excellent one. Especially good reflections of the third parties, the regional perspectives on the bilateral rivalry. In Chinese we have a saying that onlookers always have clear a picture of the game. So the third party views of the four end states, I think are the four scenarios we can imagine toframe the reflections of the regional countries.

I think it is a good contribution to understanding the outlook of the geopolitical issues in this area. I think “primacy” and also “hegemon” are quite ambiguous concepts . I would like to use the concept of a pole . India want to be a pole . Indonesia wants to be a pole based on ASEAN, and China also wants to be a pole . But it’s understandable why so many countries worry about China. I, personally, I think China’s size and its quick speed of riselooks formidable in the eyes of other countries. So, China should notice that.

On the American side, I think also there are many things that could be done to reconcile these rivalries. The United States is, I think, is still the unipolar country and it’s but it still views China- both sides need to stop demonize the other side, but especially on the American side, I think.

The United States State Department still list China as a dangerous country and advises their citizens to not to go to China. And some candidates like Trump threatened to raise the tariff to 60 percent on Chinese goods. The China Initiative is still being extended.

This kind of issue would not help to reconcile the mistrust. So I think the Chinese response also understandable. How to deal with that is what we need to do in that sense. I think state, universities, intellectuals, and foundations all have their own roles to play. I hope to make some contribution to that. That’s why I do this. I will stop there. Thank you.

Tanvi Kulkarni: Thank you so much, Professor Yu for your enlightening remarks. At the beginning of our webinar, you did mention that as simple as it sounds, this question of how do we build trust is really a challenging question to address. So, thank you so much for taking up that challenge and presenting your recommendations, particularly your initial point on the importance of scholarly, academic, and intellectual exchanges as the bottom line of building trust is well taken.

I will now move on to our third discussant Dr. Zack Cooper. Zack, you have recently written about end states in the US China relationship, and you frame the concept a bit differently than this report does. You discuss two extreme end states, which is co evolution and regime change, as well as steady state competition, which appears to be the Biden administration’s approach.

How does the analysis of the preferred end states of regional actors in the Asia Pacific in this report compare to your own analysis? You also talk about the need to build domestic and political support in the United States for a long term phased approach, which incorporates all those elements over the next decades.

Could you briefly elaborate on that argument and also comment on how you believe these end states would be received in the region, that is, the Asia Pacific? And to what extent is the United States going to be able to receive and sustain regional support for its envisioned end states?

Zack Cooper: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Tanvi and thank you for having me here. I’m really a huge fan of the work that you at APLN have done. I think it’s a great report. I hope everyone has a chance to read it. So let me just jump in with a couple of thoughts on the end states debate, but I think where I would start is- I really like the quad chart that you have. I think it’s very thoughtful way of presenting this information.

I actually think we’re probably in the bottom right quadrant of the quad chart, by which I mean, I think it’s basically impossible for China or the United States to establish primacy today, I think the United States probably had primacy several decades ago, and it’s long gone.

And I think it’s almost impossible for me to imagine China establishing primacy, even in East Asia, but certainly not across the end of Pacific or the globe in the near future. And so I think what we’re looking at is multipolarity. And the question is, what sort of multipolarity we’re going to have.

And here I would say, multipolarity sometimes is balanced and sometimes is unbalanced. Pretty clearly the US and China are the biggest poles in the international system right now. If you just look at economic weight, they are by far the two largest economies. They spend more on their militaries than anyone that comes after by quite a bit.

You could go on down the line, but I think you’re going to have a lot of countries that see themselves in a multipolar system playing the role of, as Professor Yu said, a poll, right? I think India would see itself this way. Europe, if you want to consider Europe as a United Europe would certainly be a poll of the existing system.

And look, you’ll have other members, whether it’s Indonesia or Brazil or Russia that are rising that want to play the role of a pole. And so my personal view is that we’re already in a multipolar system, and the question, therefore, is just how to manage that multipolarity. And now I actually think that this is good news for Americans because the most challenging system I think we’d be in is a bipolar system in some ways, in which the US and China would be directly at odds, but a multipolar system actually opens up some opportunities because it’s not directly head to head. There are other players, and I think the US and China will have interests that overlap in certain areas, and interests certainly that conflict or that are competitive in others. But I will say in the near term, I’m not particularly optimistic that the US and China are going to be able to work out their differences. And for that point, I would just go back ten years. I think the Obama administration made a well intentioned effort to reach out to Xi Jinping, to the Chinese leadership and to try and reset the course of the US China relationship.

You might remember the Sunnylands “Shirtsleeve” Summit, as it was called at the time. And, if you talk to American officials at the time, they really seriously hoped that this would work. And I think what we saw afterwards is that both Beijing and Washington have turned away from that path for potentially reasons in terms of their leadership in both countries, but also political dynamics in both countries that are feeding on one another.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible to turn back the clock. I would just emphasize the point that even if we could go back 10 years. The approach the United States took didn’t work. It didn’t lead to deeper cooperation between the US and China. In fact, if you look at polling data, when American views of China started to change was right around the time that the United States was trying the hardest to engage with Beijing.

I think we’re unfortunately going to be in a much more competitive world for the foreseeable future. The way I thought about end states as a result is that I think the US has to think in a phased way. I don’t think we’re going to have a cooperative end state anytime soon, but I think we could get to one down the line.

I think what would be required, however, is a sort of fundamental change, perhaps in both capitals, but certainly a change in China about the objectives that Beijing has and the way that those overlap with American interests. I think it’s unlikely that under Xi Jinping, the United States and China are going to have a genuinely cooperative relationship. It might be that after Xi Jinping, they don’t have a cooperative relationship either and I think, let’s be honest, that’s due in part to actions that both sides have taken. But as much as I wish we could turn back the clock here in Washington and go back to the policies that might lead to greater engagement and substantive cooperation between Washington and Beijing. I don’t think it’s possible now. I don’t think it’s politically possible in the United States, and I’m not sure it’s politically possible in Beijing at the moment either.

I think what we’re going to have to do is have, as I said, a phased approach, one in which over the near term we’re going to have a fair amount of discord. But hopefully we can avoid a conflict.

I think your report does a wonderful job walking through ways to try and make sure that the competition doesn’t become a conflict. And then in the longer term, we should be looking for ways to get down to your bottom right quadrant, where we really think about using multipolarity in a way to establish a new order that can be stable.

I think it’s going to be hard in the near term to get there, but I think over the long term that’s possible. So I know we’re a little short on time, so why don’t I leave it there, but really looking forward to the discussion with everyone.

Tanvi Kulkarni: Thank you so much, Zack, for your presentation. It’s really helpful.

Very interesting that you see that we are already in the fourth quadrant of multipolarity where neither the US nor China are going to be able to establish primacy and we have many other states being a part of the strategic competition, so to say. Naturally a question would be who would be those key players and what would be their fundamental objectives and how would we then use this multipolarity to establish a long-term, stable order?

So, thank you so much to our three discussants for their remarks on the report and their own research. I do want to give a minute or two to our authors, Joel and Manpreet to respond or reflect on the remarks made by our three discussants before we open the floor for questions and discussions. But before I hand it over to you, I just want to invite our attendees to drop their questions into the chat box.

So that once you have responded we can take your questions and I’m looking forward to a lively discussion. Go on Joel.

Joel Petersson Ivre: Right. Thank you so much for those thoughtful remarks. And thank you so much to for staying up so late and for Melissa to get up early in the morning to speak and also to our colleagues in India, of course, who are up very early.

I think there are many things to touch upon. Just in terms of going through the responses, I think that Melissa’s remark actually highlights something that’s quite interesting, something that we try to capture in the report, which is that you have to look at the competition at different levels of analysis.

We generally try to focus on states and countries, but as you can see with the Australian case, for example, some certain industries, certain parts of Australia are much more affected by Chinese sanctions than others. And so when you look at the sub state level, many different many different kind of policy preferences (emerge) .

I do think it’s interesting that the revealed preference of Australia is very much in favour of trying to keep the US engaged. Of course, AUKUS can be an entire point of discussion in itself, whether that’s actually going to work out or not, and whether it’s actually in the US benefit to pursue AUKUS given the opportunity costs to its own submarine fleet.

To move on further to what Professor Yu was saying about this idea that the US is still unipolar – and I see the difference between the Chinese and the US interpretation is very clear here – that Professor Yu argues the US is still unipolar and Zack argues we are in a multipolar state. And I think that is a fundamental- (it) speaks to this perception gap that the US already perceives itself as being in a multipolar state – sorry, Zack and Professor Yu for making you both the kind of monolithic representations of each of your countries – but I do think that is something that really needs to be more well understood on both sides that. The US – in my very personal view which I tried not to give too much expression to in the report – the US isn’t as primacist, but there’s that aspiration, I think, which still lingers.

We have published another report by ambassador Piper Campbell, who argues how the US could potentially seek a less primacist approach – she doesn’t phrase it like that in so many words – specifically to Southeast Asia. So I encourage anyone to, to look that up.

And yeah I would argue, my personal view that we are definitely moving towards a multipolar system, whatever preferences are and efforts to push against the, this change from any given actor, I think is also something that is causing a lot of strain. I think that definitely this is something that we are also going to look much deeper at when we take this project forward. We look at different views of multipolarity.

I think the U S view of multipolarities, we haven’t really even thought about that, but I think that’s something that’s worth also looking into. Because the very basic definition is just many different poles, but there’s so much more to a multipolar system. And would it actually be more safer, more secure, would it be more stable?

I think many viewpoints that are expressed in this particular project from regional countries has been on the assumption that yes, a multipolar world would be more fair, no single country would be able to to dictate the rules. But I think there are also grounds to actually challenge that a multipolar system isn’t necessarily the perfect system which is not to say that there is another perfect example, just that you have to manage a different kind of instability.

I think I’ll leave it there to Manpreet if she wants to add anything.

Manpreet Sethi: Yes, I do want to add my thanks, first of all, to the three of you for so thoughtfully engaging with this report, reading it carefully and, coming up with your comments. I agree with most of what has been said. Three things stood out for me.

I think I will start with Zack’s comment about the impossibility of US or China to get to a primacy state in today’s times. I think the old time primacy that we were used to with the US certainly is not possible any longer, but we did hear from different constituents of the Asia Pacific, the countries to suggest that they could disaggregate the concept of primacy, where you had economic on one front and military on the other or security on the other, and therefore, you could have a different type of primacy being exercised by the two major powers. Professor Yu, I really liked your point about lack of trust being the biggest problem today, but we did find that many countries felt that what the Chinese were saying as part of their official documents and official language and how it got translated on the ground was very different and therefore the trust problem is not just between US and China, but also between China and the other states in the region.

We heard from Melissa mentioning how 2020 changed things between Australia and China. In fact, 2020 changed things between India and China as well. So there was a wake up call on the economic front for Australia and on the security front for India. So the whole idea of this is that while the reality of the competitive world is very well understood, how do we get this competitive world, where as Professor Yu, you said to not look at each other as the demon. We don’t want to demonize each other and we want to try to get away from the possibility of confrontation. So if the two major powers really matter for this part of the world, just as much as this part of the world matters for the two other big powers, then how should this engagement be taken forward?

We are literally as part of this report, holding up a mirror to the US to China and to the regional states about what they are saying, what they want, and the disconnect between what is going on. That was the idea, and I’m just so grateful to all of you for having, given us new thoughts and for corroborating some of the points that we made in the report.

Tanvi, back to you.

Tanvi Kulkarni: Thank you so much Joel and Manpreet for your reflections on our discussants’ remarks We have questions coming in, in our Q& A chat box. I just want to remind everyone that you can put down your questions in the Q& A chat box. You can address it to any one of the speakers or to the panel, as a whole. We have one question by Javeed Alam , who’s from the Center for Air Power Studies in Delhi, India.

His question is: “what kind of multiple arrangements do the middle powers in the Indo-Pacific prefer? And are there any points of convergences or points of divergences for the middle powers in the region vis-a-vis the US-China rivalry? Joel, would you like to start addressing that question and then the rest of the panel can also reflect on it.

Joel Petersson Ivre: Sure. Just to use a few examples: China, India, Indonesia, I think are examples that you could could look at and how they kind of view multipolarity in different ways. You have China, which I think is sometimes not so clear.

There is a, there’s an attempt at being a cooperative and investing in countries but it’s sometimes perceived as a little bit too much unilateral and dominance, even from countries that are generally very accepting to Chinese presence. So like in Pakistan, for example, we spoke to people in Pakistan who said that they felt Chinese presence was sometimes a bit overbearing and not necessarily always in the best interest of Pakistan. Even if, of course, they don’t have many alternatives.

I think the Indian view of multipolarity is very different. In a sense, because India wants to be a pole that balances out the pole of China. And I think China is less intent on being like a pole that, that balances out India. Of course I would be presumptuous to speak too much about the specific Indian strategic views in the company of my coauthor who knows those issues much better.

But then if we look at Indonesia, for example, steeped in this Southeast Asian tradition of cooperation and dialogue without so much overt security ties. I think those are fundamentally very different ways of managing multipolarity. I can’t give you a great list of where these things overlap and not so I’m sorry to the person who asked the question, but that’s something that we actually are intend to look at as we take this project forward. And I think that is potentially a very useful way of just in general, managing stability in the Asia Pacific. So thank you.

Tanvi Kulkarni: Thanks, Joel. Melissa, you did say that you have to leave in the next couple of minutes. Do you have some concluding remarks that you’d like to give?

Melissa Conley Tyler: Probably we’ve covered most of it. I thought Zack’s suggestion that there’s no pure state anymore except multipolarity, I think that is true. I suppose what I would say in some people’s heads, they still have visions of different futures. I think that does affect people in how they manage this. So, in the sense of, how does Australia want to manage multipolarity – multipolarity with a hefty dose of US dominance is better than multipolarity without, if you want to put it in those terms.

Thank you very much for the chance to be part of this discussion and again, I really commend this report and we’ll be promoting it through our channels. We think it’s got some excellent insights at the granular level, how complex this is, rather than simplistic narratives that sometimes take off. So thank you for your work on this Manpreet, Joel, and Frank.

Tanvi Kulkarni: Thank you so much, Melissa for your support and thank you for being here today.

Zack, the same question to you, very quickly your concluding remarks on, whether multipolarity will be a stabilizing system or not?

Zack Cooper: Yeah, I think this is just a fascinating question. I’m really looking forward to your work on this as you go into the next phase of your project. But I think what Dr Sethi said is just so critical here. In my mind, the question is what we really mean by multipolarity. I think the idea, for example, that the US can have military primacy in Asia is hard for me to imagine as a defense expert anymore. But the way I’ve been thinking about this is more as what I would call “fragmented multipolarity.” I think if you look at certain regions there are parts of the world that actually look quite unipolar or bipolar, right?

So look at North America. North America doesn’t look particularly multipolar at the moment, right? The Indo-Pacific might, but take Europe, right? To the extent that you think of NATO as a united alliance , it’s still unipolar or with Russian opposition, bipolar. And then at the same time, I think you can break the world down in a functional way and think about different issue areas in which for example, economically, the US and China are the dominant economic players in parts of the world. And yet at the same time, in the tech sphere or the security sphere, you have a lot of other players that are really important. And so what I think what is so complex about this arrangement is that it looks unipolar at times, it looks bipolar at times, and it looks multipolar all at the same time, depending on the functional or geographic issue that you’re looking at.

And so from an academic perspective, I think it’s very difficult to define. And in fact, it’s very difficult to understand whether this is going to lead to stability. And my personal view is that it’s just going to be hard for us to know until we’ve had a bit of time in this new world and seeing how that’s changed the kind of interactions that we see between states. I think that’s the real challenge that we’re going to have over the next few years.

It is, as Melissa was just saying, about how do we even conceptualize what multipolarity is so we all think of it in the same way. And I think part of the challenges, even in Washington, you’ll get 1000 different views on what primacy and multipolarity are and it is hard to talk across countries about what we’re thinking in terms of the order, but it’s hard to even talk within, I think, our own capitals sometimes because we have different frame.

Tanvi Kulkarni: Thank you so much, Zack. We are at the hour, so I’m going to give the last 30 seconds to Professor Yu. Professor Yu, if you have some concluding remarks.

Yu Tiejun: I think the concept of restraint, reassurance, and accommodation emphasized in the report are welcome, and everybody, it seems to me, most of the countries like multipolarity and dislike unipolarity, except for the unipolar, maybe.

I agree that we need to clearly define what multi polarities means. But in China’s perspective, China has always emphasized its relationship with the United States and also the neighborhood diplomacy. I think two things, the major power relations and also the Asian diplomacy, those are the most important two points for Chinese foreign policy nowadays. So I think we all want to see a stable and prosperous Asia. That’s my last word.

Tanvi Kulkarni: Thank you. Thank you so much, Professor Yu. We have come to the end of the roundtable today and we conclude today’s webinar.

I just want to thank all of you, all the panelists, the author of reports, the discussants and to all the attendees for your time and for your insights, particularly to those who were able to join us very early in the morning and very late at night. Thank you so much for coming here. I learned a lot from the roundtable today, and I hope all of us are taking interesting insights from the report as well as from our panelists.

I also want to thank the Carnegie Corporation of New York on behalf of my colleagues from APLN for supporting this project and also supporting the project in Year Two.

I want to encourage all of you to please visit our website, www.apln.network , for looking at the project and its publications. We just published the latest report from the project by Kristy Hsu, who is the director of the Taiwan Studies Center. Her latest report, “ ” has just been published. So please take a look and keep an eye out for our next webinar.

Thank you so much.

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The opinions articulated above represent the views of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network or any of its members, board or funders. APLN’s website is a source of authoritative research and analysis and serves as a platform for debate and discussion among our senior network members, experts and practitioners, as well as the next generation of policymakers, analysts and advocates. Comments and responses can be emailed to apln@apln.network.