Bye-bye, Taiwanese independence

Across Asia, Beijing's Star Is in Ascendance By JANE PERLEZ

China's presence mostly translates into money, and the doors it opens. But more and more, China is leveraging its economic clout to support its political preferences.

Beijing is pushing for regional political and economic groupings it can dominate, like a proposed East Asia Community that would cut out the United States and create a global bloc to rival the European Union. It is dispersing aid and, in ways not seen before, pressing countries to fall in line on its top foreign policy priority: its claim over Taiwan....

Among the most nervous is Singapore. China publicly scolded the new prime minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, before his inauguration in August, for visiting Taiwan, where Singapore trains its soldiers, even though his father, Lee Kwan Yew, had visited Taiwan many times. China said it would delay trade talks as a punishment.

The gravity of the threat was not lost on Mr. Lee. In his first major speech in August, the new prime minister hastily reaffirmed Singapore's support for a "one China" policy on Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province....

Most countries in the region, like Thailand, are already on board with China's claim to sovereignty over Taiwan, and some in Australia worry that China is quickly chipping away at the last holdouts.

I'm not saying this is a good thing, just what looks like happening. And some of the Asians are going to regret this, unless they learn how to play the Chinese off against the Americans.

Even as America's position erodes, its policies - on Iraq, North Korea, weapons proliferation - have tended to push China and its neighbors together. Not least among the shared interests is a "mutual concern about the unilateralism" of current American policy, said Muhammad Noordin Sopiee, chairman of Malaysia's Institute of Strategic and International Studies.

"They need regional friendship, we need regional friendship," he said of the Chinese. "They need time to develop their economy, so do we. They need protection from the United States and so do we."

Unilateralism? Wait'll you see how the Chinese behave.