As the United States and China tussle for influence around the world, South East Asia is particularly affected – so what is the current state of play in the region?
The battle for supremacy between China and the United States has taken a back seat thanks to the coronavirus outbreak, with both countries struggling to control the spread of the virus within their own borders.
But hostilities will resume soon enough, and the state of the relationship was the topic of discussion in Wellington among three visiting experts from the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), a non-profit and non-partisan research institution based in the United States.
Speaking at the event hosted by the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, NBR’s executive vice president Michael Wills said the increasingly confrontational American approach towards China was driven not just by Donald Trump, but other broader trends.
The American business community, which had initially been supportive of China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation and a champion of a stronger relationship, had started to lose confidence in the country due to restrictions put on foreign companies operating there and concerns about IP theft.
Concerns about the impacts of globalisation had been effectively linked to China’s rise by Trump’s 2016 campaign leading to wider public discontent, while recent Chinese actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang had increased awareness about its human rights violations, Wills said.
“It’s not something that will be during the Trump administration and somehow spring back to the situation pre-2016 with a new administration…there are deep structural reasons [behind the change].”
Wills said his biggest fear was that the US stepped away from its global leadership role. The most recent comparison – the 1920s and 1930s when Great Britain stepped back from the world stage – led to a long period of economic dislocation.
“As the US continues to develop the contours of its strategy towards China in an era of increasing competition, the United States is still trying to figure out how it can itself navigate this world of economic interdependence.”
Alison Szalwinski, NBR’s vice president of research, said many countries had been grappling with the immediate effects of increased US-China competition, as supply chains started to shift and states had to make decisions on issues like 5G networks.
There had been a spectrum of responses: at one end were the states simply seeking to avoid any negative repercussions from the competition, in the middle were those positioning themselves between the powers to protect their own interests, and on the other side were those who could take advantage of the rivalry to advance their own interests.
Countries such as Australia, Japan and India, which derive significant economic benefit from their relationship with China but also rely on the US when it comes to security, were carefully balancing their concerns about Chinese regional expansion with maintaining trade and financial ties, she said.
“This is true even for the United States: as the US continues to develop the contours of its strategy towards China in an era of increasing competition, the United States is still trying to figure out how it can itself navigate this world of economic interdependence.”
She said there was also a clear message coming from Indo-Pacific countries to both the US and China: “Don’t make us choose.”
That was a view echoed by her colleague Ann Marie Murphy, who said: “The most dangerous international environment for small and medium-sized states is one of zero-sum competition…
“No South East Asian state wants to face a binary choice between Washington or Beijing, but increasingly they believe that they do.”
China’s early decisions to join ASEAN architecture had given member countries hope that they could “enmesh” the country within the organisation’s structures.
However, subsequent moves – such as its 2009 revival of a “nine-dash line” territorial claim in the South China Sea, and its militarisation of man-made islands in that area – had increased its threat in the region dramatically over the last decade, Murphy said.
Former US President Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” had been in part about improving confidence among its partners – particularly in South East Asia – that it could be seen as a reliable partner, in an economic sense as well as on security where the country had typically focused.
“Clearly most South East Asian states, they really want to hedge their bets, but the strategic space for them to do so is narrowing.”
However, that had been replaced by Trump’s transactional, America First approach, including the withdrawal from the TPP trade deal and a move away from other multilateral economic commitments that were most welcomed in the region.
The Trump administration’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy was consequently viewed warily by the countries, as they saw it as entrapping them in great power competition rather than serving their own interests.
There was “a divergence of interests” on issues like the South China Sea, with the American focus on free passage through waterways contrasted with South East Asian nations wanting to protect their own territorial interests.
Murphy said a 2020 survey by the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute showed real concern about US engagement in the region. Given a hypothetical choice between siding with the US or China, seven of 10 countries chose the latter, with only Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines opting for the US.
“Clearly most South East Asian states, they really want to hedge their bets, but the strategic space for them to do so is narrowing.”
* Victoria University of Wellington is a sponsor and supporter of Newsroom.
