The world is big enough for the US and China; what are other countries doing?

LAST week, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen capped off her four-day China visit, saying, “The world is big enough for both the United States and China to thrive.”

Her second visit to China in nine months as treasury chief is aimed at “addressing escalating trade disputes between the world’s largest economies as the two sides try to stabilize relations following a summit between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last November,” according to CNN.

Yellen reminded the public: “No one visit will solve our challenges overnight. But I expect that this trip will help build a resilient and productive channel of communication.” On the same trip, she clarified that the United States would persist with what she characterized as “targeted economic actions to protect national security.”

The world is big enough for the US and China; what are other countries doing?

Her trip followed the recent Beijing trip of several top American CEOs. Secretary Blinken and the presidential envoy for climate change, John Kerry, are also scheduled to visit China in the coming weeks, according to the New York Times.

In other parts of the world

“A stable India-China relations are important for the entire world,” India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, told US magazine Newsweek in a rare public interview as he seeks his third consecutive term.

“For India, the relationship with China is significant. I believe that we need to urgently address the prolonged situation on our borders so that the abnormality in our bilateral interactions can be put behind us,” said Modi.

He also hoped that the two neighbors would be able to restore peace at its borders through positive engagement.

Tensions in India and China relations escalated in 2020 when Indian and Chinese troops clashed at the border called the Galwan Valley battle — it was fought with batons and bricks, not guns — and was the first fatal confrontation between the two sides since 1975. Both sides accused the other of trying to cross the line of actual control— the de facto border between the two countries. The clashes left at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead. The two countries share an ill-defined 3,440-km (2,100-mile) border in the Himalayas, a source of tension for decades.

Former Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou, who led Taiwan from 2008 to 2016, met with Xi Jinping in Beijing this past Wednesday for the first time since Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) fled to Taipei in 1949. “The Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait will definitely have enough wisdom to handle cross-Strait disputes peacefully and avoid conflicts,” Ma said. There is “no problem that cannot be talked through,” President Xi Jinping told Ma. A second Taiwanese leader, the former mayor of Taipei, is scheduled to visit mainland China next week.

In a hardly reported news item that will have far-reaching consequences for the progress of science and mankind, the US Congress waived a ban that prevents NASA scientists from collaborating with China last December 2023, when NASA requested a waiver to apply for access to portions of Moon samples collected by China’s Chang’e-5 mission from China National Space Administration (CNSA).

“The Chang’e 5 samples originate from regions of the Moon not yet sampled by NASA and are expected to provide valuable new scientific insight into the geological history of the Moon. Applying for samples will ensure that United States researchers have the same research opportunities as scientists around the world,” NASA wrote in an email.

This also paves the way for American scientists who received grants from NASA to participate in the meeting in China later this April to propose borrowing the material for research from the Chinese space agency. Other applicants on the list include top planetary scientists from prestigious American, British, French and Japanese universities.

Mainland Southeast Asia speeds up links to China’s Belt and Road

Vietnam has announced that it has sent delegates to China, led by its National Assembly chairman Vuong Dinh Hue, to learn not only how to build a high-speed train connecting Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh but also to prioritize building two high-speed rail lines to Mainland China by 2030. This comes after the successful completion of Hanoi’s first metro rail in cooperation with China.

Vietnam’s news is one of the many developments of our neighbors playing catchup after the completion of the 422-km Laos-China train and Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed rail, which has substantially cut travel time and cost by more than 80 percent. The 873-kilometer rail link between Thailand and China is also being fast-tracked, which will connect Bangkok to the Nong Khai on the border with Laos, where it will connect to the China-Laos Railway. When the link is completed, it will be possible to travel by train from Bangkok to Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunnan province.

The completion of a high-speed rail through Vietnam will fast-track the larger Kunming-Singapore railway plan, where several lines will be built connecting China to Singapore, including Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia and Cambodia.

Malaysia has also revived the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore high-speed rail project, projected to cut travel time from four hours to 90 minutes. It has recently received seven proposals from international and national conglomerates.

At a grander scale, these railways will be important links to the Trans-Asian Railway, a 14,080 km (8,750 miles) rail link project connecting Asia and Europe that may extend all the way to Africa under the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

Where is the Philippines?

The Philippines canceled three rail projects totaling almost P300 billion, which would have added over 500 kilometers of new rail lines to the country. Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said that China had apparently lost interest in the projects, and some critics reason that the ongoing West Philippine Sea issue may have played a role, but why are Indonesia and Vietnam speeding up their infrastructure cooperations with China even amid ongoing maritime disputes?

Other Philippine officials say they are confident that they can find alternative backers for the railway projects. As our Asean neighbors race ahead, and costs of construction materials and prices of goods continue to increase, what are concrete plans for the Philippines to not only improve the connectivity of our 7,000 islands but also to the fast-evolving regional and global economy?

Austin Ong’s research interest focuses on the Philippines and Asean economic development, US-China relations and innovation.

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