In July 2016, in response to North Korea’s rising nuclear threat, the US and South Korea announced their decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), an antimissile battery built to intercept short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. China quickly objected to THAAD on the grounds that it would weaken its nuclear deterrence capabilities and decrease Chinese influence in the region. To coerce South Korea to disable and remove THAAD, China launched a year-long campaign of economic retaliation, targeting the consumer goods, entertainment and tourism industries. Though it faded quickly and quietly, the THAAD dispute reveals much about the current limitations of China’s power, as well as its potential.

China specifically raised concerns that THAAD’s X-band radar, which monitors THAAD’s surroundings, had too large a scope and could gain information about China’s military actions further inland. However, US defense officials have pointed out that an existing, similar instrument deployed in Japan has a comparable, marginally smaller scope. While China’s claims were technically weak, they were understandable symbolically. Many Chinese found it concerning for the US to deploy a military weapon on neighboring South Korea’s territory – a neighbor who had been recently improving relations with China.

After over a year of tensions, in late October 2017, South Korea and China suddenly announced that they would work towards improving bilateral relations. South Korean media content started re-appearing on Chinese platforms that had previously stopped showing it, the consumer goods and tourism industries began to pick up their lost momentum, and the short-lived protests against the South Korean conglomerate Lotte Group had mostly ended.

Looking closer, the limited impact of its economic blows reveals the boundaries of Chinese power. The first retaliatory action to make headlines was limiting Chinese viewers’ ability to access and consume South Korean entertainment. Popular South Korean celebrities also cancelled or suspended public appearances in China. Even within the gaming industry, Beijing tightened regulations to make South Korean games’ entry into the market more difficult. These industries have felt some impact from the ban and experienced a decrease in the trade surplus of media content in the first nine months of 2017. Nevertheless, the entertainment industries were not significantly hurt by China’s ban, as they expanded their presence in other markets.

China also targeted certain South Korean consumer products, including food products, cosmetics, and automobiles. South Korean carmakers Hyundai and Kia both experienced the effects of the THAAD dispute and saw significant drops in Chinese sales. Although many companies have felt a negative impact, the decrease in some sales were compounded by other factors like boycotts from Chinese citizens and not necessarily strictly by Chinese policy. The South Korean cosmetic giant AmorePacific cited both stagnation of the domestic economy and the decrease in tourism after March 2017 as reasons for slowing sales growth and decreased operating profit.

As China was and still is the number one provider of tourists for South Korea, tourism was the industry that experienced the largest setback during the THAAD controversy. Chinese policy was partially responsible, as regional travel companies suddenly stopped selling package tours to South Korea, but other factors like concerns for safety and political tensions, anger at Lotte Group, and increased negative perceptions of South Korea also contributed to decreased tourism, one study showed. Overall, the number of tourists fell by 3.29 million in the first nine months of 2017 as compared to 2016, leading to a total $6.8 billion loss for the tourism industry.

The hardest hit by this economic dispute was Lotte Group, the South Korean conglomerate that sold the South Korean government the land it used to deploy THAAD. Before the conflict, Lotte owned more than 100 department stores and supermarkets in China, but since February 2017, the Chinese government closed more than 70 of them, citing safety concerns. Lotte Group closed the remaining stores after large protests at numerous storefronts. Recently, Lotte Group announced that it would sell all of its stores in China, abandoning its previous effort to expand its presence in the Chinese market.

Despite all of these negative impacts, the South Korean economy as a whole did not suffer significantly from Chinese retaliation. In fact, total Chinese exports increased in 2017; in the first eight months of that year, South Korean exports to China rose by 12 percent. Despite China’s economic might, many Chinese businesses rely on South Korean companies as part of their supply chains, which helps explain why only three main industries were hit.

Though it came out largely unscathed by China’s economic attacks, it would be difficult to argue that South Korea – and the US – definitively won this dispute. Granted, THAAD is still fully operational today. However, during reconciliation talks, Seoul assured Beijing that it would not seek additional THAAD deployments nor join a trilateral military alliance with the US and Japan. China may not have achieved its full desired outcome, but it did succeed in placing some boundaries on its neighbor’s future behavior. Meanwhile, the popularity of domestic boycotts bolstered the Communist Party of China’s (CCP) power at home.

More than anything, this dispute demonstrated the scope of China’s global clout. Its failure to effect THAAD’s removal revealed that its international influence remains limited by its integration into the global economy. In other words, China can only tolerate cutting off its corporations from foreign markets up to a point. Moreover, China clearly still faces bigger security questions surrounding North Korea. However, as China’s economic might continues to grow, it could become a more viable tool for asserting Chinese power globally, as well as garnering domestic support for the CCP.

In the coming weeks, the remnants of this heated dispute will fade as the region turns its attention to the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics. With North and South Korea planning to march under a united flag and create a joint women’s ice hockey team, there are modest signs of peace and hope. But even as the world comes together for 17 days of symbolic unity, the underlying distrust in the region caused by this conflict cannot be swept aside with colorful flags and cheerful processions. While nations applaud each others’ athletic accomplishments, the THAAD battery lies a mere 125 miles away, casting an uneasy shadow over the celebrations.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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Hong Kong’s chief executive election results have maintained the political status quo, much to Beijing’s liking. However, it also revealed cracks underneath this former colony’s concrete foundation that threaten the stability of this urban jungle city. On March 26^th, a small 1,194-member Election Committee casted 777 votes for Carrie Lam, the city’s newest chief executive and first female leader, defeating former financial secretary John Tsang and retired judge Woo Kwok-hing.

During the race, Lam was seen as the Mainland Chinese government’s preferred pick for chief executive. She was the former deputy to the outgoing chief Leung Chun-ying, who was infamously unpopular among Hong Kong citizens for his pro-Beijing sentiments, and Lam shares his similar ideology. In 2014, Lam pushed for electoral reform that would grant universal suffrage for Hong Kong – only after all potential candidates were hand picked by the Chinese Communist Party. This proposition spurred tens of thousands of people to protest on the streets, culminating into the famous “Umbrella Revolution” where protesters used umbrellas as physical shields from the police and as a visual symbol of universal suffrage.

Disputes on how Hong Kong elects its chief executive have been growing feverishly in the past years. Currently, the top leader is elected by a small 1,200-member Election Committee, which makes up only 0.16 percent of the Hong Kong population and is heavily comprised of pro-Beijing elites. Those who criticize this lack of representation also state that this system doesn’t follow Basic Law. According to that constitutional document accepted in 1997 when British colonial hands returned the city back to China, it promised universal suffrage.

This is why John Tsang, who supported direct elections for Hong Kong, was immensely popular among Hong Kong locals even though most locals could not vote for him. Tsang is a well-established civil servant who, despite his elite background, appealed to the public with his laid-back, non-elitist image. Unlike Lam, who seemed so well connected with Beijing, Tsang simply felt closer to the people of Hong Kong.

While this may seem like a pro-Beijing candidate pitted against a pro-democracy one, the issue of electoral reforms belongs to a much larger, growing political fissure in Hong Kong. This complex city has nurtured its own unique Chinese narrative under a capitalist economy formerly under British rule, while the Mainland has developed its own separate personality.

Contemporary Hong Kong now faces an identity divide. The pro-Beijing benefit from economic ties to the Mainland, while others dislike a seemingly overbearing Mainland presence. A few have even called for Hong Kong independence. As the PRC exerts more influence, this identity divide and differing political sentiments will increasingly build up tensions between the opposing sides.

If she could choose, Lam would likely maintain the status quo and please her pro-Beijing supporters. However, the city faces troubling trends that she cannot ignore: low birth rates, an aging population, tremendous income inequality and unaffordable housing. As the elderly population grows older and requires more government social support, Hong Kong will need more young workers. However, the large income gap has left the younger generation dissatisfied with Hong Kong’s lack of social mobility. Meanwhile, the housing crisis needs political and economic reforms so people can have better places to live.

The Mainland government, too, will pay attention to these issues because it highly values domestic stability. Lam will do a fine job at running such an economically important city the way Beijing wants her to run it, but the CCP will exert influence on Hong Kong in other ways. For example, in 2015, five Hong Kong book publishers associated with disseminating books on the Chinese elite went missing and later appeared under Mainland Chinese custody. This is an extreme case, but it shows that Beijing will not stop its surveillance of Hong Kong anytime soon.

In the coming years, it will be Hong Kong who will shape Lam’s legacy, not the other way around. While Beijing wants to strengthen its grip on the city, Hong Kong will continue ever-so-slightly slipping away from Mainland hands because of the city’s continuing social trends and the unwavering spirit of its locals. The yellow umbrella symbol is still found in corners of this modern metropolis, tucked away yet nevertheless thriving.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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President Donald Trump, a man elected on reminiscings about a past American Dream, has inextricably nurtured the China Dream. Last Monday, President Trump signed an executive order withdrawing from the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, the massive Asia-Pacific trade agreement spearheaded by the former Obama administration. Within three days in office, Trump ended eight years of negotiations with 11 other nations, many of which depended on the TPP for lower trade barriers and greater economic prosperity.

Following the US withdrawal, the international conversation now turns to China, the economic giant not included in the TPP. President Trump’s actions have not only signaled the ending of American influence in the Asia-Pacific but also paved an unobstructed pathway for China to become the dominant power in the region.

This power shift in the Asia-Pacific follows a long history dating back to the Cold War of China’s and the United States’ competitive and cooperative relationship. Towards the late 20^th century, as the Four Asian Tigers captivated foreign analysts and China began its massive developments, the United States worked to improve relations with Asian countries and to present itself as a benevolent hegemon. By 2008 China, relatively unscathed by the financial crisis, showed the world its increasing geopolitical significance with its “thousand drummers” at the Beijing Olympics. In response, the Obama administration aggressively pushed for America’s pivot to the Pacific.

During the Obama era, the US was the main provider of security and mediation in the region, yet it remained weary of China’s undeniable and growing economic presence. Out of that ethos came the TPP, which would promote free trade by removing barriers and boost the economies of signatory nations. Former President Obama wanted to use the TPP to maintain US influence in the region and counterbalance China by leveling the playing field and instilling US-based rules that address environmental protection, labor rights, intellectual property and state-owned enterprises. This was the established American foreign policy narrative shared by many past presidents of both political parties. Trump has now reverted this American tradition.

Throughout last week China remained quiet about the withdrawal, careful not to support President Trump and cautious of America’s unpredictable future plans. Nevertheless, the US departure from the TPP is undeniably beneficial to China, who can continue promoting its Beijing-centric economic agenda without hindrance. Meanwhile, the US lost trust among its partners for failing to follow through on the trade agreement, diminishing its credibility as a reliable economic and security partner.

Many TPP participating nations are already turning to China as the alternative. Last week, New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English stated that his country needs to pursue other trade deals. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull suggested that China could possibly join the TPP. The TPP is not necessarily dead, and perhaps Australia, Chile, New Zealand, and even Japan could salvage the remains. A TPP without US participation would still foster economic growth, but it certainly loses an attractive and influential market. Other signatories stated that they would pursue bilateral agreements with the US or turn to an alternative trade agreement: the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP.

Until today, RCEP has operated under the shadow of the TPP. Initiated in late 2012, this proposed free-trade agreement includes the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nation, or ASEAN, countries along with Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea and New Zealand. The difference between RCEP and the TPP is that RCEP does not require adherence to the various rules of environmental protection, labor rights, intellectual property, etc., and it does not reduce trade barriers to the extent proposed by the TPP. Unlike the TPP, RCEP is heavily influenced by China, even though China will not explicitly say so. China can use RCEP to write its own trade rules in the Asia-Pacific – rules more develop-oriented and less influenced by western values. Seven TPP signatories are also included in RCEP, so the world will be watching RCEP’s negotiations much more closely. RCEP nations will meet for the 17^th round of negotiations in Japan beginning on February 27^th.

Ratifying RCEP will be a boon to Chinese power in the region, but the country is already expanding its sphere of influence. In 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared his “one belt, one road” infrastructure initiative to connect to European, Southeast Asian and African markets through Central and Western Asian countries, as well as sea routes. China has established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, similar to the Asia Development Bank, in order to fund this project. The country also continues to pursue the Free Trade Agreement of the Asia-Pacific, or FTAAP, which is a long-term goal to link all economies in the Asia-Pacific under regional and bilateral free trade agreements. Both the TPP and RCEP would support FTAAP efforts, but now, the favor falls into Chinese hands.

We are all spectators of China’s rise in the international arena, and it will be interesting to see how it develops during the Trump presidency. China will not challenge international institutions outright, because the country still benefits from the current international world order. Instead, China can utilize its own initiatives to improve relations and build more favorable economic conditions for itself. This sets the stage where international rules can gradually shift in their favor. China is not yet a super power. The country is realizing its soft power deficiency and the limits of its economic might. However, an increasingly self-aware China is becoming more comfortable with other nations in the face of the slow decline of the United States.

And yet, China did not openly celebrate the US withdrawal from the TPP. President Trump’s actions are reminiscent of American protectionism of the early 1900s, contributing to a more unpredictable global climate today. No matter who influences international rules, China is still inextricably linked to and dependent on the US as a prime trade partner. If Trump continues his current agenda, both the American and China dream will feel the effects of US protectionism for years to come.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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