It is over a month since Nancy Pelosis vexing visit to Taipei and Chinas disapproving response, which included large scale air and naval exercises around Taiwan. This ill-omened stopover by the third-ranking person in the US political hierarchy ineptly created, amongst other things, further acute doubt about Washingtons continuing commitment to the one-China principle.

Many commentaries emerged after these events. Certain Western media outlets argued that in East Asia and South East Asia there was a lack of support expressed for Chinas response. This anxious line of argument was aimed at trying to bolster stale claims that the US was enjoying renewed backing for amplified, confrontational meddling in the region.

In fact, the support most conspicuously lacking across the entire region was for Pelosis reckless visit. Overt backing was close to non-existent and criticism was widespread. Current senior office holders typically expressed their disapproval by maintaining a stony silence sometimes accompanied by declamations that all (especially the US) should lower rather than elevate geopolitical tensions. South Koreas new President purposefully avoided meeting Pelosi altogether.

Others, more freely able to speak, were intensely critical. The respected Singaporean commentator and former senior diplomat, Kishore Mahbubani, said that Pelosis visit was reckless and dangerous and fundamentally self-serving. Moreover, she was utterly indifferent to the fact that her actions will create in the long run steps towards World War III. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said that the visit had made Taiwan less secure. Former Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, said after the Pelosi visit that the US was seeking to provoke a war with China over Taiwan. Then there is an excuse, he went on, for the US to help Taiwan, even fight against China and sell lots of arms to Taiwan.

Professor of modern Chinese history and politics at Oxford University, Rana Mitter, put his finger on a primary reason for the clear regional exasperation related to this presumptuous stopover. Its very important, he argued, that conditions are created for stable, free and open trade and interaction between all peoples in the region. Recent events remind us all that peace and prosperity go hand in hand.

He may well have had in mind the graphic, bloody reminder of the centrality of this peace-based foundation for building better living conditions evidenced by the terrible conflict in Ukraine. Once again, Europe has found itself pitched into a major military struggle. This grim replay of Trans-Atlantic militarised conflict resolution serves as a compelling lesson about what, above all, to avoid.

According to Investopedia, China has been the largest trading nation in the world for almost a decade. Total exports in 2019 were estimated to be US$2.64 trillion. China has benefitted immensely from this rise and so has the rest of the globe, not least Chinas regional neighbours. Despite many challenges, including the COVID pandemic, this region in Asia has become, as Professor Mitter says, the most economically dynamic area of the world.

It is apt, here, to recall former President Jimmy Carters observation, in 2019, on the American way of sustaining that_Rules Based International Order_ which suits US interests so uncommonly well. The US, he said, was the most warlike nation in the history of the world" due to its desire to impose American values on other countries. He also highlighted how the US had only been at peace for 16 years since it was created as a nation in 1788. According to a Brown University study in the US, America has wasted around US$6 trillion on fighting wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other nations since 2001. Meanwhile, China, Carter observed, had not wasted a single penny on war since 1979.

This is the reality that East Asia and South East Asia have experienced over the last four decades and value so much. There are geopolitical tensions between ASEAN States and China and elsewhere within the region, of course. But all these states have witnessed the huge benefits that have flowed from enhanced trade and development (and avoidance of military conflict) thanks, above all, to the extraordinary, peaceable rise of China.

Even the two Pacific-region states that (avidly encouraged by Washington) are most argumentative with Beijing, Japan and Australia, have benefitted immensely from trade with China. Australia, directly as a consequence of its China trade, broke the OECD record for uninterrupted growth stretching over a period of around 30 years.

Kishore Mahbubani recently argued that, Australias strategic dilemma in the twenty-first century is simple: it can choose to be a bridge between the East and the West in the Asian Century or the tip of the spear projecting Western power into Asia.

As it happens, fresh evidence has revealed just how favoured that spear-tip role is - and how weirdly twisted Canberras Sino-antagonism has become over the last several years. Recently, there have been leaks from meetings, in April, 2020, of the powerful Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security and the National Security Committee of the Australian government. According to these verified revelations, the former Prime Minister Scott Morrison took a decision, on April 20, to up the ante with Beijing, adding that, the time has come [for Australia] to be more strident in its language about Chinas conduct.

At almost the same time, the then Australian Foreign Minister, Marise Payne, issued an incendiary call for a forceful, non-WHO, global inquiry into Chinas handling of the COVID pandemic. This precipitated a further major nosedive in the relationship with Beijing, which delivered zero benefit to Canberra - apart from getting a tick for pleasing the Trump administration in Washington at that time.

A little over a year later, in mid-2021, Prime Minister Lee_Hsien Loong_, of Singapore, intelligently advised Prime Minister Morrison that, There will be rough spots [with China] you have to deal with them. But deal with them as issues in a partnership which you want to keep going and not issues which add up to an adversary which you are trying to suppress. All subsequent behavioural evidence suggests that this advice was comprehensively ignored by Morrison.

Still, all the more attentive regional players in this crucial area understand that, as Christine Loh recently argued, we have entered the Age of the Great Reset of the established world order: this is the long-term pivot to Asia that truly matters most. Moreover, Professor Lau Siu-kai lately observed that, while some countries in the Asia-Pacific region might be sympathetic to Taiwan, they all support the one-China principle and see the conflict across the Taiwan Strait as an internal Chinese dispute (Taiwan will increasingly be seen as USs strategic liability).

Thus, as the dust has settled on Pelosis wayward visit, we can see how it has confirmed in the minds of almost all regional parties that the last thing they want to see is any sort of enhanced, inflammatory attempts aimed at imposing the American-tilted version of international order in East Asia. This strategy may be appealing to Washington as it resentfully struggles to come to terms with Chinas extraordinary success in transforming itself but it has scant appeal within East Asia itself, where trade has proved, continuously over the last four decades, why it beats war every time. Even in Canberra and Tokyo, this penny must surely drop. Eventually.

Republished from the China Daily Hong Kong Edition