Despite this, the United States is obsessed with bringing a regional ideological competition to Asia at all costs in the name of containing China, seeking to pide the region into competing blocs. As a result, the United States believes that it should economically dominate the region and not China, and that it, as opposed to Beijing, ought to have the greatest say in its future. As a result, the “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” is an effort by the US to try and set the rules of region whilst not actually being economically integrated with it at all. The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework is not a free trade agreement, not a treaty, not an institution or multilateral body or anything substantial, it is merely a set of rules and principles which the US thinks it can utilize to isolate China.
In formulating the “Indo-Pacific economic framework”, the United States is likely to make an appeal to its primary partners in the region, including South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Whilst ASEAN is the primary focus which the US seeks to dominate, ultimately none of these countries will be prepared compromise their economic ties with China which they see as critical to their own growth strategies. It is not surprising of course that, South Korea already, under its new pro-US president Yoon Seok Yeol, has announced it would “join” the framework. Whilst this may seem significant given its role in the global semiconductor supply chain, something the United States is keen to isolate Beijing from, in practice Seoul continues to rely overwhelmingly on China as its largest bilateral trading partner, including too in semiconductors, and cannot afford the price of increased confrontation. Last year, the US attempted to block the expansion of South Korean foundry Hynix in China. The move was unsuccessful.
Japan is likely to be a more prominent partner for the US in pushing the “Indo-Pacific framework” than Seoul, but again one must question is it truly prepared to make serious compromises to its heavily integrated commercial relationship with China? Tokyo is constantly touted to represent an alternative source of trade, finance and infrastructure investment to other countries in Asia than China, and there have been some obvious initiatives to try and push this in recent years. One might note for example how it is building a metro system in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, whilst it has competed with China for High-Speed-Rail projects in Indonesia too. However, this is far from a bid to “set the rules” of the entire region because in reality, China’s GDP is ultimately far larger than Japan’s, an economy which is in practice stagnant. Even Tokyo cannot porce itself from reality. The same rule applies for both New Zealand and Australia. Whilst the latter is overwhelmingly loyal to the United States, Wellington has taken a pragmatic and realistic view to economic integration with China on the back of the record trade surplus it receives from exports there.