Should-Read: Martin Wolf: Asia’s dynamism at risk in US and China’s competing visions for global trade

Should-Read: Martin Wolf: Asia’s dynamism at risk in US and China’s competing visions for global trade: “China is promoting a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)… https://www.ft.com/content/343e8300-0288-11e7-aa5b-6bb07f5c8e12

…exclud[ing] the US and other TPP members from the Americas. But it adds Cambodia, China itself, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand. Including the world’s two most populous states, RCEP’s members generate some 31 per cent of world exports and its aggregate GDP is bigger than that of the TPP. Though less ambitious than the accord abandoned by President Trump, the RCEP could form the basis of a future free trade area of Asia and the western Pacific, but one with China, not the US, as the hub….

China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative… might accelerate the emergence of such a market… us[ing] China’s capital and organisational abilities to enhance the supply of infrastructure…. The infrastructure needs of the Asia-Pacific region are so vast that additional Chinese resources should be helpful.

The world, and so Asia, is now in an unstable balance between globalisation and deglobalisation and between US and Chinese leadership. The US is turning its back on its postwar role, once so vital to Asia’s economic success. Will what takes its place be chaos and confusion or a new order built around China? Optimists might consider this a time of opportunity. Pessimists can consider it a time of danger. It is in fact both.