Uncle Sam - The Drunken Master

In July 2016, a UN tribunal ruled that China's sovereignty claims over the South China Sea violated international law. Far from being a setback, Philippines' decision to ignore the ruling in favour of better relations with China signified the latter's growing political clout, its economic leverage and its guile in manipulating international relations.

China's shrewdness in exploiting 'free markets' and 'international goodwill' without due concerns for the long-term interests of its partners has resulted in significant political gains on the international stage, buying influence through the three prongs of debt-diplomacy, veto-diplomacy (providing economic leverage in return for political patronage - as in the case of North Korea), and schmo-placy (selectively interpreting rules/charters, and a conviction that it is completely justified in doing so - in alignment with it's 'heavenly mandate' OR 'everyone else is a schmuck').

This conjures up an image of the 'drunken master' in a Jackie Chan movie, who plays the fool, hiding his guile and shrewdness underneath. The strategy worked well for China for decades, as other nations assisted it's inclusion into a liberal global order, conceding complete control of the narrative. Thanks to Deng Xiaoping's reforms, which combined long-term policy planning, consistency in execution and periodic turnaround of political power (longer than the democratic cycle elsewhere), China was able to out-think and outsmart its democratic (chaotic and predictable) adversaries.

Unfortunately, recent trends are endangering this narrative. The election outcome in Malaysia and the Maldives, the #CPEC #BRI champion nation Pakistan's bailout request to the #IMF, are proximate indicators, may be attributed to tactical miscalculation. But even at a strategic level, Trump-led USA's dizzying fast warming-up to North Korea, or its belligerence on the economic (trade wars) front signify serious problems that may spill out into other areas as well. In fact, the US' Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) has been trending lately, drawing parallels with China's Road and Belt initiative. Trump may not have been part of the script for America, but he has particularly wrong-footed China, by his unconventional, un-POTUS like persona - brash, outspoken, able to hold a spectrum of views, vacillate between opinions at the drop of a hat, and deceivingly clever.

Adding to its woes, the recently enacted reforms by the Chinese Communist Party, paving the way for Xi to govern indefinitely, are likely to add a modicum of internal instability in domestic political echelons. As personal growth and ambition are reassessed, meritocracy opportunism may raise its head, The shock arrest of the President of Interpol, Meng Hongwei, on a recent visit to China, as well as the recent trend of curtailing freedoms in Hong Kong, may be indicative of this growing insecurity at home.

These reverses in the Chinese story may well be playing into American hands. The way things are shaping up, Trump's USA, characterised by its short-termism and fatalistic world-view, may well be fluff covering up a deeper thinking machine - a drunken master. The shoe, it seems, is on the other foot now, with America calling the shots, subtly, but surely. A marked change from the America one had grown accustomed to.