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News analysis: How the U.S. reads Southeast Asia wrong in wooing the region to counter China
By Chen Guifang

Five days after China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced the upgrading of their relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership, the United States sent its senior diplomat to visit four of them.

Daniel Kritenbrink, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia, is now on a week-long trip to Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, as part of a diplomatic charm offensive by the administration of President Joe Biden to step up engagement with the region.

Analysts believe that Southeast Asia has become an open field for competition in a geopolitical game between the world's two largest economies since the U.S. desires the region to join its club to contain and counter China's growth while Beijing works to talk its neighbors out of siding with Washington.

How has Southeast Asia been responding, and what will that do to China-U.S. relations?

Biden's pivot to a cool-headed Southeast Asia

In a thinly veiled attempt to counter China, the Biden administration has began to ratchet up efforts to sell the concept of a "free and open" Indo-Pacific region, a strategy he has carried forward from his predecessor Donald Trump.

Seeing Southeast Asia as a key battlefield, the U.S. staged a high-profile show by sending its secretary of defense in July and vice president in August to the region.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris (L) and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong hold a joint news conference in Singapore, August 23, 2021. /CFP

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris (L) and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong hold a joint news conference in Singapore, August 23, 2021. /CFP

When in Singapore, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris declared that her country would stand with its allies and partners "in the face of China's threats" and lashed out at what she called Beijing's "coercion and intimidation" on the South China Sea issue.

However, as it coincided with the chaos in Afghanistan caused by America's hasty and irresponsible withdrawal following a 20-year war and the Taliban's taking over of Kabul, the visit was overshadowed by regional countries' questioning of the credibility of the U.S. commitment.

Read more: 

'Great power competition' risks Indo-Pacific security and prosperity

Nuke is the last thing to play with in South China Sea

The Southeast Asian region, as a whole, has refused to be opportunistic but chosen instead to be cool-headed in the face of U.S. lure and pressure and the agenda Washington has set involving China's core interests.

In May, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said that an "arbitration" ruling against China on the South China Sea was nothing more than a scrap of paper that should be thrown in the trash bin.

More recently, Singapore has voiced its concerns over the U.S. hyping up of the question of the Taiwan region. Its defense minister, Ng Eng Hen, earlier in the month urged Washington to "stay very far away" from any physical confrontation with China over Taiwan, calling it Beijing's "deep red line."

In a joint statement following the upgrading of China-ASEAN relations, ASEAN reaffirmed its adherence to the one-China policy, and both sides agreed to boost political and security cooperation and strengthen defense exchanges. 

Notably, the statement also made it clear that the association aims to preserve Southeast Asia as a region free from nuclear weapons, in an implicit rebuke to the AUKUS nuclear alliance led by the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific region.

Southeast Asia countries have also resisted America's pressure to distance themselves from Beijing. ASEAN has recently announced that the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, the world's largest free trade deal the bloc initiated and inked with China and others, will enter into force on January 1, 2022. 

'Take side on regional peace'

"Countries in the region want good relations with both the U.S. and China, and do not wish to have to choose sides," said Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on November 22 at the special ASEAN-China summit where the latest upgrading of relations was announced.

Days earlier at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, Lee also voiced his welcome of a virtual meeting between the heads of state of the U.S. and China, and said it was a "necessary beginning" of what he called "a truce" between the two countries.

He also reiterated his long-held stance that it is "quite understandable" for China to "take its rightful place in the world" and urged a change of mindset to engage with it calmly.

Lee's position has been widely shared by other ASEAN members, speaking to a gesture of solidarity in upholding ASEAN centrality in the regional architecture.

"The unity and coordination of Southeast Asian nations as a whole have prevented it from being divided, incited or taken advantage of by the U.S. and therefore from being reduced into a pawn in the containment of China," said Deng Qingbo, a commentator of current affairs, in an opinion story for Lianhe Zaobao, a newspaper in Singapore.

However, Deng warned regional countries against passively watching and urged them to take the initiative to shape their own stance.

"In fact, they should clearly pick a side," he wrote.

"And that side is to unequivocally oppose sowing chaos or war in the region, especially in the South China Sea. And they should always stand on the side of maintaining regional peace and development and practicing true multilateralism."

Read more:

China's Taiwan region: America's next strategic failure in the making

ASEAN rejects U.S. power games by upgrading ties with China

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