Winning Asia: Why is the United States Struggling?

As the APEC summit concludes in Beijing, President Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have reached widely reported agreements on trade tariffs and climate change. But President Xi has bluntly informed Obama that pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong are a matter for Beijing to resolve on its own. And the Chinese government’s regional assertiveness, domestic repression, and belligerent anti-Western propaganda continue unabated. So the larger question remains: does the United States have an adequate diplomatic and security strategy – and retain sufficient determination, power, and influence in Asia – to adequately counterbalance and restrain an increasingly chauvinistic and regionally destabilizing Chinese regime?

On November 20th at 3:30 pm, Hudson Institute hosted a discussion on America’s waning influence in the region. Moderated by Senior Fellow Charles Horner, the panel included Christopher Ford, a former Hudson Senior Fellow and author of The Mind of Empire: China's History and Modern Foreign Relations and China Looks at the West: Identity, Global Ambitions, and the Future of Sino-American Relations, and Senior Fellow John Lee, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Sydney whose work is focused on the Chinese political economy, foreign relations between Northeast Asian countries and the United States, and strategic and economic futures in Asia.