Conrad Black: Trump’s Pragmatic Turn in Asia

U.S. President Donald Trump (centre L) poses with other leaders during the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Oct. 26, 2025. AP Photo/Vincent Thian, Pool

Commentary

It is clear that President Trump’s recent visit to the Far East was an extraordinary success. As he set out, there continued to be loud apprehensive noises of a potential breakdown in relations between the United States and China, largely from those who achieve an acute state of nervosity at the flamboyant manner in which this president conducts foreign policy.

It may be that Mr. Trump was overstating things when he described his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a “twelve out of ten,” but there was a clear de-escalation in the trade confrontation and what appeared to be an unambiguous return to the status quo on Taiwan that has existed since President Nixon’s agreement with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai in Shanghai in 1972. The basis of that agreement was that there was ultimately one China and that Taiwan was part of it, but the reunification would not be accomplished by force. Mao advised Nixon that it would take 100 years for China to focus on Taiwan, so the wise course was simply to leave the issue alone until that time. It seems to have been agreed to follow that advice.

Certainly, Trump has made it clear that if there is a military assault on Taiwan, the United States will actively come to the island’s defense. There has been a good deal of flippant comment about an impending Chinese invasion. As this would clearly involve conflict with the United States, such a step would be insane. Taiwan cannot be subdued by mere harassment and overflights of airspace. The U.S. Navy would penetrate any attempt at a blockade and, despite a lot of uninformed hyperbole, the newly emerging Chinese Navy is in no position to challenge the United States for the sceptre of the seas.

Only an outright invasion could subdue Taiwan, and that would require at least 500,000 men advancing across four times as much blue water as Gen. Eisenhower’s invasion force had to travel to Normandy in 1944. Unlike on that occasion, the invading force would not enjoy clear air and sea superiority in the Formosa Strait. The Chinese would have to approach in landing craft-type vessels at approximately 12 knots. The Taiwanese and Americans could safely quote Mr. Churchill in October 1940: “We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.”

Both Trump and Xi behaved on the Taiwan issue with the maturity and absence of sabre-rattling that one hopes for from leaders of the world’s two principal powers. The other main issue was the commercial one, and Trump’s domestic critics lost no time claiming that he had been swindled by Xi because the promises of reduced tariffs, greater access to the Chinese market, and revived soybean and other agricultural sales could not, given the history of China in such matters, be assumed to be reliable.

The authors of this form of criticism are looking through the telescope in the wrong direction. In commercial, as in other matters, it is the correlation of forces that decides. Despite the many years in which the United States and the West generally allowed the People’s Republic of China to pick our pockets and compromise international institutions such as the World Health Organization—which was complicit in both hiding the negligence in the origination of the COVID virus by China and that country’s deliberative propagation of it—China is not remotely as powerful and comparatively invulnerable a country or an economy as the United States.

It will be remembered that 10 years ago it was impossible to set foot out of doors anywhere in the world without someone telling you that China was about to surpass the United States as the world’s greatest economy. As of last year, China’s GDP was approximately US$20 trillion and that of the United States was US$31 trillion. The economy of the United States is now growing at a rate of almost 4 percent per year, while China has continued to adhere to its policy of declining to have an official statement or publish an official figure that is adequately supported to be believable.

There is no doubt that the swift advance of China from a very primitive economy to the second-largest economy in the world is the greatest development story in history, and the first instance in which a nation that had previously been amongst the greatest powers of the world and had fallen from that category, regained it. These are great achievements, but those who express opinions on the subject of the comparative strength of the Chinese and Americans should keep in mind that China is not rich in resources. Its only area of advantage is in rare earths, and the United States is belatedly moving to eliminate that advantage. China is heavily dependent on foreign trade, whereas foreign trade accounts for only 21 percent of the U.S. economy, so imports are only around 12 percent, and most of that the United States could make for itself after about nine months of retooling.

It takes nothing from China’s achievement of great economic and social progress to acknowledge that it is no more able successfully to challenge the pre-eminence of the United States in the world than were those who preceded it in that endeavour: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and, in strictly economic terms, Japan. The malignant character of the Chinese regime is also a distinct liability. The Chinese leadership is proud of its claim to be able to locate anyone in its population of 1.4 billion in ten minutes because of the overwhelming presence of security cameras throughout the country. It remains approximately a 40 percent command economy and is a totalitarian dictatorship. None of its institutions, except possibly the armed forces, have earned or enjoy any respect even within China. It can be said that the U.S. judicial system ranks higher on corruption compared to Canada and some Western European countries, but it is a Baptist Sunday school of strict adherence to the Ten Commandments compared to the anthill of corruption and Byzantine chicanery of the People’s Republic of China.

A word should be added about President Trump’s advantageous and jovially concluded trade agreements with Malaysia and South Korea, and his encouragement of South Korea to build nuclear submarines. It was clear that relations with India continue to be excellent, and it was telling that the president of Brazil rushed to meet with Trump on the fringes of the ASEAN conference (to which Brazil was not invited) in order to negotiate a relaxation of U.S. tariffs.

For a variety of reasons, President Trump is a more pre-eminent figure in the world than any of his predecessors since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a four-term president who led the nation out of the Great Depression and to the brink of victory in Europe and the Pacific. Even Trump-haters are now having great difficulty uttering the autocue jeremiad of American decline.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.