US-CHINA Collision Course?
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What now for Huawei? Fighting fake news What millennials think and want MCI(P) 087/05/2019 June 2019 INDEPENDENT • INSIDER • INSIGHTS ON ASIA Best New Print Product and Best in Asia/Pacic, Regional/Local Brands at International News Media Association (INMA) Global Media Awards 2019 US-CHINA Collision course? The trade spat between the United States and China is part of a deeper contest for geopolitical dominance. Does history – and ongoing developments – hold hope for a solution, or some compromise? WE BRING YOU SINGAPORE AND THE WORLD UP TO DATE IN THE KNOW News | Live blog | Mobile pushes Web specials | Newsletters | Microsites WhatsApp | SMS Special Features IN THE LOOP ON THE WATCH Facebook | Twitter | Instagram Videos | FB live | Live streams To subscribe to the free newsletters, go to str.sg/newsletters All newsletters connect you to stories on our straitstimes.com website. Data Digest Tit-for-tat taris Here’s a look at the list of Chinese goods facing US tariffs and list of US goods that China is targeting as the trade war between the two economies continues. List of Chinese goods facing US tariffs in latest retaliatory move The US Trade Representative’s Ofce plans to hold a public hearing in June on a proposal to impose duties on a further US$300 billion (S$411 billion) worth of imports from China. Here are some of the items on its list of 3,805 product categories that could be subject to tariffs of up to 25%. If the tariffs are imposed, they would make virtually all Chinese imports to the United States subject to steep, punitive duties. Food products Manufactured Consumer • Fresh produce goods goods • Meat • Chemicals • Clothing • Fish, including cod, • Plastic and rubber • Bedsheets haddock and salmon • Wood and paper • Shoes • Chicken products • Watches • Milk • Leather • Baby paciers Electronics • Wine • Metal products • Infant formula • Cellphones • Cocoa • Pencil • Laptops • Olive oil and other sharpeners • Tablet computers kinds of oil, including Transport • Pesticides • Microphones sunower oil, palm oil • Cars, bikes and • Books and coconut oil parts List of US goods China is targeting with 25% tariff China raises tariffs on US$60 billion (S$82 billion) worth of US goods on June 1 in retaliation for the Trump administration’s decision to increase tariffs on US$200 billion worth of Chinese imports, from 10% to 25%. Beijing will increase tariffs on more than 5,000 US products from 5% to as high as 25%, the Chinese Finance Ministry said. Here is a list of some of the 2,493 goods that are be subject to a 25% tariff. Food products Consumer goods Natural resources • Frozen, dried, smoked and • Furniture, including metal and chemicals salted beef or wood frames for • Rocks, including granite, • Honey upholstered furniture marble, chalk and sandstone • Frozen spinach and • Bedding and sleeping • Precious and semiprecious legumes, including peas, bags stones, including diamonds, beans and lentils • Footwear, including leather and rubber rubies and emeralds • Fine and coarse rice, corn and wheat our boots, sports shoes and accessories for • Metal ores, including iron, nickel, zinc, as well as processed oats shoes titanium and zirconium • Any plant used mainly as a spice • Hats, umbrellas and walking sticks • Natural liquid gas • Virgin olive oil, peanut oil, soya bean oil, • Lighting xtures • Fertilisers sunower oil, coconut oil and sesame oil • Watches and clocks • Chemicals, including chlorine, iodine and • Soft drinks and bottled water • Musical instruments, including upright sulphuric acid • Spirits, including gin, tequila, vodka and pianos, stringed instruments, wind • Dyes and pigment other distilled spirits and alcoholic beverages instruments and keyboards Transport Electronics Building materials • Parts for railway or • Coffee makers, hair dryers, • Building stone, bricks, tramway locomotives microwaves, space heaters, panels and oor tiles • Track signal electric ovens • Wall and ceiling coverings equipment for railway • Television broadcast cameras • Pipes and tubes or tramway • Telecommunications equipment • Wood ooring and carpets • Sailboats, motorboats and yachts • Microphones, headphones, speakers, recorders, • Small tools, including handsaws, scissors • Canoes and other recreational DVD players and other accessories for video and and other blades vessels audio equipment • Tools used for drilling, milling or boring1 Sources: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS, OFFICE OF THE US TRADE REPRESENTATIVE, DEUTSCHE BANK, BLOOMBERG PHOTO: AFP STRAITS TIMES GRAPHICS Warren Fernandez Editor-in-Chief, The Straits Times & SPH’s English, Malay and Tamil Media (EMTM) Group Sumiko Tan Executive Editor, The Straits Times Dominic Nathan Managing Editor, EMTM Tan Ooi Boon Senior Vice-President (Business Development), EMTM Paul Jacob Associate Editor, The Straits Times Eugene Leow Head, Digital Strategy, EMTM Irene Ngoo Vice-President (Editorial Projects Unit) EMTM Jeremy Au Yong Foreign Editor Shefali Rekhi Asia News Network Editor, The Straits Times & Editor, ST Asia Report DESIGN Peter Williams Head, Visual, EMTM & Art Editor, The Straits Times Chng Choon Hiong Cover photo illustration Marlone Rubio Executive Artist 44 Gareth Chung Entertainment Senior Executive Artist Anil Kumar How Game Of Thrones changed television Graphic Artist COPY DESK Ronald Kow Sub-editor, The Straits Times Cover Story Cover Story Are the superpowers heading for China not blinking as it digs in CIRCULATION 4 a collision, or can they be 16 for prolonged trade war Eric Ng frenemies? Head, Circulation Marketing Tommy Ong What would Lee Kuan Yew advise? Senior Manager (Circulation) Speaking Of Asia REACH OUT TO US: A world where events ‘ebb and What if China does yield? For advertising enquiries: flow’ 20 Sharon Lim Ling Shaping the Indo-Pacific story: Senior Manager Asean’s turn (Business Development) [email protected] Circulation & subscription: Delia Gan Executive [email protected] WE WELCOME YOUR FEEDBACK AND VIEWS Letters can be sent to [email protected] Published by The Straits Times, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) Printed by Times Printers Private Limited All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part2 without written permission from the publisher. Cover Story Trump may be seeking to decouple contents 14 US economy from China’s Business Watch Singapore Watch Huawei on the ropes? Singapore’s 19-year-olds: Who 24 43 39 they are, what they want Singapore Watch Key finds of 19+ Worldview Women expect to be survey paid less A degree? Yes, please Purpose over pay cheques Entertainment China’s rumble over royals Fight Fake news 49 28 Singapore adopts fake news law Big Picture Country update Cardboard metropolis PM Morrison pulls off 52 37 Australian election ‘miracle’ 3 Cover Story US-CHINA Are the superpowers heading for a collision, or can they be frenemies? WARREN FERNANDEZ Harvard thinker Graham Allison, who wrote about conflicts Editor-in-Chief between great powers, shares his insights on how to avoid clashes and find a way forward, perhaps through ‘rivalry partnership’ between the key players. THESE DAYS, HARVARD PROFESSOR GRAHAM instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable,” the Allison is hailed as something of a prophet. book notes. [email protected] Officials he met in China recently referred to The insecurity engendered in the incumbent him as the man who “predicted” a clash between power at the prospect of being displaced by an the United States and China, he says. emerging challenger could set them up for a conflict “It was not a prophesy,” he adds. “I simply pointed that neither might want. out the recurring patterns of history. This could be sparked by events beyond their “Today, the conversation has moved to the more control, giving rise to a cycle of actions and urgent question, which is, what’s to be done, and reactions, resulting in an unintended clash. how to escape Thucydides’ Trap?” “It’s crazy, but these things can happen,” notes He is talking about his ground-breaking, best- Prof Allison, pointing to the events that led to the selling book, published in 2017, with the ominous First World War. The assassination of archduke Franz title, Destined For War: Can America And China Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Escape Thucydides’s Trap? a Serbian nationalist in June 1914 dragged Europe The book, whose title refers to an ancient Greek into a devastating war within weeks. historian’s chronicle of upstart Athens taking on His analysis about the power dynamic between Sparta, caught global attention for its study of 16 waxing and waning powers – China, he says, is periods of power rivalry over the past five centuries. a “fast-moving, unstoppable force heading for an These resulted in a major clash in 12 instances. immovable object”, namely the US – seems prescient “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this and timely, given the ongoing, increasingly bellicose, 4 ASIA REPORT June 2019 US President Donald Sino-US trade spat. validity of the idea of a Thucydides trap is “largely Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping at a This took a marked turn for the worse in May, over”, insists Prof Allison, a former dean at my working dinner in Buenos when US President Donald Trump accused Beijing alma mater, Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School Aires in December. Mr of backtracking on commitments for a proposed of Government, who has served as an adviser to Trump recently accused trade deal, which Beijing denies. defence secretaries under the Reagan, Clinton and Beijing of backtracking on commitments for a The sticking points seem to be China’s baulking Obama administrations. proposed trade deal, which at America’s insistence that it cut state subsidies to He is at pains to add that his book was “not about Beijing denies. its enterprises, open up its markets, curb industrial predicting a war, but how to prevent one”. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE- espionage, and agree to a mechanism to enforce any That, he reveals, is his next big project, which PRESSE trade deal that might be reached.