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Opinion
Why US allies are resisting China’s charm offensive on trade
Centuries of shared identity, security integration and cultural allegiance bind these nations irreversibly to the US strategic architecture
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Wenran Jiang, the founding director of the China Institute and Mactaggart Research Chair Emeritus at the University of Alberta, is an adviser at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy.
Geopolitical tremors from Washington’s trade wars against its closest allies – the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Canada and Australia – might have convinced Beijing of an impending realignment. China has seized the moment with a charm offensive, urging pragmatic cooperation amid tariff spats.
Beijing rightly condemns Washington for shredding the very World Trade Organization rules and post-war liberal order it crafted, calling for collective action against US coercion. Yet despite the tangible frustration – seen in the EU’s retaliation threat and Japan’s rhetorical condemnation – no ally has substantively defected or moved closer to China’s orbit.
This recalcitrance reflects not a fleeting opportunism but an unyielding anchor: centuries of shared identity, security integration and cultural allegiance bind these nations irreversibly to Washington’s strategic architecture.
Observe first the sterile harvest of Beijing’s courtship. While allies vocally decried US steel tariffs and agricultural levies, their response to China’s promises of mutual benefit remained clinically cautious. The hypocrisy is stark: they lament US violations of multilateral trade norms while refusing China’s appeals to jointly defend the system.
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