Beijing looks west to keep TPP in check

KATSUJI NAKAZAWA, Nikkei senior staff writer
BEIJING -- After suffering a serious setback in its bid to effectively divvy up the Pacific, China is shifting the focus of its foreign policy. Beijing is now aiming to become the major Eurasian power by creating a sprawling economic zone linking East and West by land and sea.
     China wants to establish a "new Silk Road economic zone" to serve as a counterbalance to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade pact that brings together a dozen Pacific Rim nations.
     Beijing's desire to control a significant portion of the Pacific became clear in June 2013, when President Xi Jinping made his first trip to the U.S. after taking office. "The Pacific Ocean has enough space for both China and the U.S.," Xi said at the start of talks with President Barack Obama in California.

DF-26 ballistic missiles are paraded through Beijing on Sept. 3. (Photo by Takaki Kashiwabara) 

     Deviating from China's traditional diplomatic tactic of concealing its goals, Xi pressed the U.S. to recognize China's real strength, proposing "a new type of great power relationship."
     Now, a Chinese scholar specializing in international affairs sees a number of "keywords" that will determine China's future approach toward the U.S.: the TPP, the new Silk Road initiative, aircraft carriers and Dongfeng, or DF, ballistic missiles. The expert said China's destiny will be decided by geopolitical factors in the Pacific to its east, the new Silk Road to its west, and the South China Sea -- a region Chinese ballistic missiles are now capable of reaching.

    As economic and security developments go, the Japanese government's decision in 2013 to participate in the TPP talks was a big one.
     Comments from one Chinese trade bureaucrat at the time sum up Beijing's sense of alarm and outrage: "The U.S. and Japan think they can dictate how the vast economic benefits of the Pacific are shared, but any discussions that ignore China, the biggest trading partner of both countries, will be invalid."

     China was clearly feeling the heat over the TPP. It even secretly explored the idea of joining the negotiations, though it eventually abandoned the idea.
     Xi then began to speak of the "vastness of the Pacific," though the goal of sharing the ocean with the U.S. had come up years earlier.
     When Timothy Keating, then commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, visited China in 2007, senior Chinese military officers proposed that the two nations jointly manage the Pacific. They suggested that if China were to obtain an aircraft carrier, Hawaii would be a logical demarcation line. Keating disclosed the Chinese proposal at a congressional hearing.