In this important region, the United States is "catching up" with China

National Public Radio article on January 20, original title: China's trade and infrastructure projects sweep Southeast Asia as the United States focuses on defense As the United States intensifies its strategic competition with China, the United States has "ceded" a large part of its influence in Southeast Asia to China in the past 20 years.

Biden administration officials have visited Southeast Asian countries several times over the past year, and as the United States deepens competition with China in technology, investment, infrastructure and security, ASEAN members are both hopeful and uneasy.

The most significant parts of the U.S. roadmap for Southeast Asia — the economic and business framework — still lack details, but U.S. officials say its outlines will become clearer in 2022. Teacher Jackson, senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, wrote in Foreign Policy magazine this month: "Compared with other areas, China has taken more actions in this policy area aimed at replacing the status of the United States. ”

Singaporean scholar and former diplomat Mahbubani Mahbubani said Southeast Asian countries were less interested in talking about "freedom" and "openness" and more about how to meet the region's material needs and how to recover from the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. He believes that the U.S. focus on national defense and security in Southeast Asia may not be the best guarantee of its long-term interests. "In the long run, the more U.S. military spending, the worse it will be in dealing with a stronger, larger Chinese economy," he said. ”

He noted that China has surpassed the United States in terms of trade and economic exchanges with Southeast Asia. In 2020, China's trade with Southeast Asian countries totaled $685 billion, nearly double the volume of U.S. trade with the region ($362 billion). Twenty years ago, the United States traded 3.5 times as much with Southeast Asian countries as China did with the region. "So, at the end of the day, trade is the most important statistic. The key is not how many submarines you send to the region, but how much trade you have with the region. ”

Gregory Pauline, senior fellow for Southeast Asian affairs at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, agrees. When U.S. Secretary of State Blinken visited Asia last December, he said, "no one on the ground was fooled by the fact that the U.S. government lacked trade policy, and america's biggest weakness remains trade."

There is a growing perception that the United States now has to play a catch-up role after withdrawing from the region's two largest trade deals. The latest of the two agreements, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), entered into force on January 1 this year, lowering tariffs on most signatories that have ratified the agreement. The agreement covers 10 economies in Southeast Asia with China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, covering 2.3 billion people and accounting for more than a quarter of global trade.

The Biden administration is pushing ahead with a new initiative called "Rebuilding a Better World" — clearly with consideration for replacing China's Belt and Road Initiative. But Mahbubani pointed out that China is far ahead of the United States in solving the urgent need for infrastructure. From Indonesia to Malaysia to Laos, China has funded and supported a number of important transport projects. "As one of the least wealthy countries in the world, Laos now has new high-speed trains, faster than any other train in the United States," Mahbubani said. ”

Source: World Wide Web