In the 50 shades of diplomatic speak, the word “accommodation” is only slightly less stinging than that other A-word: “appeasement”. Last week, a senior US official rebuked the UK for its “constant accommodation” of China. London had agreed to be a member of a Beijing-led infrastructure bank that some fear could one day challenge a US-led World Bank. The implication is that other concessions have been made. A deal not to meet the Dalai Lama here. A soft-pedalling on Hong Kong democracy there. “We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China, which is not the best way to engage a rising power,” the official said.
That raises the question: what is the best way to engage a rising power? If “constant accommodation” is not the answer, what is? The US would doubtless deny that the alternative is “constant containment”. Rather, it would say, China must be coaxed into the existing international order, whose rules and norms have served the region well for 70 years. The problem is that, from Beijing’s perspective, those rules and norms have been made in Washington’s image.
That applies to multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, where China has a 3.8 per cent share of voting rights despite having 16 per cent of global output. It also applies to norms covering maritime affairs that, again from Beijing’s viewpoint, allow the US to police Asian waters vital to China’s interest or to preserve postwar territorial delineations in contravention of China’s historic claims. If Beijing must abide by international norms created by the west when China was down on its knees, who, it might reasonably ask, needs containment anyway.