By Minxin Pei
The U.S. ambushed and isolated China at the East Asia summit. If China wants to recover it needs to manage its competition with the United States – and not scare its neighbors.
If 2010 was the year China made a series of strategic and tactical moves to strengthen its position in East Asia, 2011 saw the region push back.
Nobody knows this better than Beijing. At the recently concluded East Asia Summit in Bali, Indonesia, China was literally ambushed by the United States, which skillfully coordinated a pushback against China’s assertiveness on the South China Sea. Except for Burma and Cambodia, every other country present at the summit, including Russia, implicitly criticized China’s stance on the South China Sea and called for a multilateral solution, which China has consistently opposed.
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