Clyde Prestowitz: Kissinger in China: Triumph or Disaster?

Clyde Prestowitz is the president of the Economic Strategy Institute and writes on the global economy for FP.

Henry the K was at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace yesterday using the occasion of the publication of his latest book, the portentously titled On China, to take another, perhaps a final, victory lapfor his work in carrying out President Richard Nixon's strategy of achieving a diplomatic opening to China....

...[F]ast forward [from 1972] to last week's Shangri-la Security Conference in Singapore. As I noted yesterday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates strongly reaffirmed Washington's commitment to maintaining its commitments and even to enhancing its military presence in Asia at the conference. But this was one of those cases where to have to explicitly make that kind of statement was itself an admission of declining influence. Gates spoke as he did because senior Asian leaders like Singapore founding father Lee Kuan Yew have been expressing concern that America might not be sticking around to counteract the rapidly expanding influence of -- guess who -- China. Indeed, they fear that because of increasing economic  weakness, the United States might not be able to stick around much longer as the prime guarantor of Asian stability.

It was the Opening that changed things in a way that has reduced America's relative power and influence while enhancing China's.  Or, perhaps I should say not that it was the Opening, per se, but the way the Opening was eventually structured that changed things in this way. In a sense the opening was as much or more of the United States as of China. The U.S. market was opened to China's inexpensive, consumer-oriented exports while China's production centers were opened to off-shored U.S. factories, technologies, and jobs.