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The big international winner from Donald Trump’s victory in the US election is likely to be Chinese President Xi Jinping.
If Mr Trump follows through on his rhetoric, his win will require massive rethinking on Australia’s position in the world, as the US, our core ally, starts to retreat strategically and economically.
While Mr Trump publicly admires Vladimir Putin, it is the Russian leader’s increasingly close ally Mr Xi who stands to gain most.
Hillary Clinton was the architect of the US’s “pivot to Asia”. That strategy now appears dead in the water — under Mr Trump’s campaign positions.
The US-led, 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, in which Australia is a major participant, also looks doomed.
Mrs Clinton opposed the treaty during the campaign but might have been susceptible to another U-turn — which seems inconceivable for Mr Trump.
The plunging sharemarket indices around Asia yesterday underlined the fears of countries, and especially businesses, about their continent’s fate under a Trump presidency.
Exports comprise about 25 per cent of Asia’s gross domestic product, and 20 per cent — the biggest single amount — has been bought by Americans.
Australia would suffer serious damage from any trade war since its three biggest foreign markets — China, Japan and South Korea — would be greatly affected.
Because Chinese-assembled products often emerge from production chains including inputs from its neighbours, any barriers against China would hurt the whole region.
South Koreans are especially anxious about the fate of their free-trade agreement with the US, which Mr Trump condemned as costing 100,000 American jobs.
Filipinos are concerned about the threat to clamp down on foreign workers in the US, since 35 per cent of all Filipinos working overseas are in America, providing valuable remittance incomes.
Mr Trump has vowed to “punish American companies that outsource jobs abroad” — causing particular anxiety in India, which has attracted much of that work.
The way appears to be opening for Mr Xi to emerge — using the rhetoric he honed during his recent chairmanship in Hangzhou of the G20 — as the new leader of the troubled international thrust towards economic globalisation.
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Mr Trump has said he would withdraw 54,000 US military personnel from Japan and a further 28,500 from South Korea unless those countries contributed more to their costs.
Japan pays about $5.25 billion a year towards the cost of the US bases, and South Korea about $1.15bn towards the US presence there, the latter about 40 per cent of the total cost.
A US withdrawal would enable China to dominate East Asia in a way no country has done since Japan 75 years ago, and would require a massive shift in Japanese and South Korean strategic thinking.
Mr Trump also said the US would be “better off” if Japan and South Korea had nuclear weapons — matching those of China and North Korea.
“You always have to be prepared to walk … It could be that Japan will have to defend itself against North Korea,” he said.
Admiral Harry Harris, head of the US Pacific Command, would need to battle to keep his position under a Trump presidency, having advocated forcefully for US naval tests to Chinese hegemony over the South China Sea.
Yuichi Hosoya, an international politics professor at Keio University in Japan, told
TheWall Street Journal: “By pulling away from the region militarily, the US would lose political influence in the Asia-Pacific, and experience crushing economic losses.
“Trump is trying to do what China has constantly desired for the past five years. China wants the US to pull away from the region as much as possible to create a regional order that maximises China’s profit and security.”
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has already conceded to Beijing on the South China Sea issue, despite Manila having won its case at an international UN Convention on the Law of the Sea arbitration hearing.
His bigger-picture shift towards Beijing’s influence may now be followed by others in the region who have been waiting on the US election result, with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and the military rulers of Thailand foremost among them. Indonesian President Joko Widodo is among those who have sought to maintain strong relations with the US and China but may now be weighing other options.
The anxiety in Asia about the Trump presidency is heightened by uncertainty about his foreign affairs advisers, about whom little is known.
The figure who has emerged as a likely key player is Peter Navarro, 67, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of California who wrote a controversial book,
The Coming China Wars, in 2006 and made the 2011 documentary
Death by China.
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