This week’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing shows that Supreme Leader Xi Jinping was serious when he promised in January to become “proactive” in international affairs. Deng Xiaoping ’s maxim that China should bide its time and avoid taking the lead abroad is in the dustbin of history. This is the era of Chinese assertiveness.
Mr. Xi’s vision includes a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific that is broader than the U.S.-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) , as well as two new regional development banks. Beijing will create a $40 billion Silk Road Fund to build ports, roads and rail links to link up the region, a project some have dubbed China’s Marshall Plan.
That moniker may not be officially sanctioned, but it is revealing: Mr. Xi’s charm offensive is an attempt to out-American the Americans. China played the spoiler at the World Trade Organization to defeat the Doha trade talks in 2008, but he laments that “various types of regional free trade arrangements mushroomed, creating puzzling choices.”
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