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Fellows of Salzburg Global's latest Pathways to Peace Initiative present findings on the strategic positioning of Asian democracies to shape cohesive policies toward China
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Salzburg Global Seminar convened a program on "Crossing New Rivers by Feeling the Stones? Aspirations, Expectations, and China's Role in the 21st Century" from February 18 to 21, 2024, as part of its broader Pathways to Peace Initiative. During this program, Salzburg Global Fellows from 14 countries gathered to discuss the pressing issue of global interaction with China; they incorporated the perspectives of narrative frameworks, economic challenges, technology, and pathways for future engagement in light of rising geopolitical tensions.
Four working groups were tasked with addressing different aspects of this engagement. In the working group findings summarized below, Fellows explored the role that Asian democracies can play in facilitating a strategic and cohesive policy toward China. They considered a range of policy-making models and institutions that could enable constructive dialogue among vastly different social orders.
This document records the discussion and proposes findings for further dialogue rather than firm policy recommendations.
The strategic positioning of Asian democracies such as Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea collectively hold significant potential in shaping cohesive policies toward China. Such a grouping raises questions about whether an exclusive club of democracies inherently excluding China would prove most beneficial, or if groupings are better defined by shared interests. A key priority for many Asian nations is to engage globally to promote their national interests without having to choose between China and the United States.
There should be a focus on building habits of cooperation and moving away from terms like "Indo-Pacific" which carry political connotations of exclusion toward China. Instead, the focus should shift toward identifying topics where countries naturally align due to mutual benefits, rather than at the real or perceived bidding of the US or any single nation.
Institutional models like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) could prove fruitful. The inclusion of China, Taiwan, and the United States in the CPTPP might be a strategic move, allowing them to focus tactically on industry while maintaining a strategic eye on China. Each country in the CPTPP has its unique issues and vulnerabilities concerning China.
Aside from existing fora like the CPTPP, new mechanisms could be formed, the importance of which can extend beyond the specific subject area of cooperation. Process discussions on the form of cooperation, including the venue, leadership, and overall structure, can often open channels that lead to concrete positive outcomes on issues. The form of cooperation could well involve, for example, a co-CEO model between Singapore and either New Zealand or Australia.
Under the co-CEO model, countries could delve into specific issue areas, facilitating constructive dialogues between China and other Asian countries on matters such as trade, fisheries management as a public good, combating ocean plastics, promoting carbon capture technologies, offshore wind projects, tackling light pollution, addressing deforestation, and organizing cultural exchanges and festivals.
OECD initiatives offer good examples of issue-focused cooperation that are useful examples to consider. Japan’s push for Data Free Flow with Trust, for example, was started by Shinzo Abe when Japan lead the G20 in 2019. It evolved and continued under the auspices of the OECD and tackled thorny issues, including foreign government access to private data that crosses national borders. Yet another model of collaboration need not occur solely at the national level, but could also manifest through sub-national efforts, such as by establishing clean supply chains.
A further example is the Helsinki Process, which advances cooperation by focusing on physical, environmental, and personal security, while maintaining a principle of non-intervention in other countries' affairs. The process entails holding regular, inclusive meetings without obligations, and aiming to find common standards and points of contact over time.
Fellows further delved into critical issue areas that require attention at this juncture.
Pooled resources through initiatives like National Compute platforms (these allow countries access to the computer capacity needed to store, process, and transmit data at scale), shared medical data for localized machine learning, or a Green Asian Deal could provide a network to generate the productive scale needed to increase economic returns and broadly shared social benefits. Longer term, this framework approach could also pave the way for peaceful coexistence among very different countries through cooperation on setting standards, scientific exchanges, and corporate governance models.
Issue areas could emphasize regional alignment. For example, increasing consumer demand for reduced plastic usage or promoting environmental sustainability is a shared priority for most Asian nations. Moreover, it is an issue area around which China welcomes input from civil society, where it otherwise tightly controls civil society voices. In lieu of cultural exchanges promoted between the United States and the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s, increased civil society engagement around environmental concerns offers a fresh, modernized approach. Initiatives like an Asian Environmental Exchange Program can crack open the updated thinking that is needed to push beyond Cold War narratives.
Although the final goal is to seek cooperation, excluding China from certain fora could potentially set higher standards for China in the long run. Since China is a chief beneficiary of global trade, for instance, it would have strong incentives to adapt its behavior to collectively determined norms for the sake of ensuring favorable trade relationships. While strategically advantageous, US participation in the CPTPP might be aspirational in the fraught geopolitical environment today.
Ultimately, there is a need to foster a nuanced, multi-faceted approach to regional cooperation, where the form and structure of collaboration potentially play a more crucial role than the substance of the initiatives themselves. A formal and structured dialogue creates the space to redirect the focus away from forcing nations to choose sides in what has become an ill-defined dichotomy pitting the US and China, and democracies and autocracies, against one another.