The beginning of a geopolitical duel in the Asia-Pacific region

Trump's disastrous policy may be a blessing in disguise for China, as it is working overtime to beat US tech supremacy and military power

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C hina's rise has been mesmerising. Like all great powers, China seeks to establish and enforce what Princeton University professor Robert Gilpin calls "basic rules and rights that influence its own behaviour and that of the lesser states in the system.

It has created a foreign policy dilemma for many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, increasingly seen as the epicentre of global geopolitics. It is here that the strategic, economic, and security interests of the world's two largest powersthe United States and China-are increasingly intersecting.

The fierce competition between the two has led to new alignments. The region is smarting under President Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs. His visit to Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea has only partly calmed trade tensions. On its part, by deeper engagements with the countries of the region, China is seeking to reshape the regional order. While some countries have resorted to hedging strategies, others, like South Korea and the Philippines, are playing what Richard J. Cook and Zhaoying Han of Nankai University, China, and Maximilian Ohle of Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen, Germany, call "linchpins as geopolitical kingmakers" amid China-US competition.

At the recent Tianjin Forum in China, Cook described this anomaly as the "power of the weak paradox". The secondary powers, he explained, "lack the capacities to become great powers, but they endorse the great power whose interests are concordant with their strategic objectives."