Understanding China and the future economic order: Australia must look to history

In May 2016, US President Barack Obama made the case for passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). “America should write the rules”, Obama said, “America should call the shots”. For if America did not write the global trade and investment rules, China would. But the election of Donald Trump has changed all this. President Trump wasted little time issuing an executive order to withdraw the US from the TPP. He has pledged to close America’s borders, apply 45 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports, and take an ‘America first’ approach to global trade and investment agreements. We do not yet know how many of these promises will be upheld. Yet invoking them threatens to unravel the US-led, liberal international economic order upon which we have depended since the end of World War II. We are facing a new world order. Australia’s traditional strategic partners are stepping back, and rising powers like China are stepping up. To navigate this, countries like Australia need to better understand China and its economic goals.