Guide
The United States, Japan and the Philippines recently announced the launch of the Luzon Economic Corridor. Its purpose is to suppress the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and contain what it calls the "economic threat to China." However, it lacks specific implementation details, and it is difficult to implement the ambitious investment vision. Previously, the United States led a similar India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor initiative, which has stalled due to a lack of practical projects and few responders. The Philippines' participation in the initiative will not bring benefits to itself, but will further be coerced by the United States to stand at the forefront of confrontation with China.
By Anthony Moretti, Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Organizational Leadership, Robert Morris University, USA
There is an old saying in the West: "If you can't beat them, join them." ”
Perhaps U.S. politicians — especially those in the Biden administration — will at some point come to terms with this reality and make the U.S. a partner in China's Belt and Road Initiative. But until that day comes (and indeed no realist thinks there will be), the United States will continue to roll out a series of lame initiatives to compete with the Belt and Road Initiative.
A recent example is the proposed Luzon Economic Corridor (LEC). According to the U.S. State Department, its main goal is to "support connectivity between Subic Bay, Clark, Manila, and Batangas in the Philippines."
To that end, the U.S. State Department said, "The United States, the Philippines, and Japan will accelerate coordinated investments in major infrastructure projects such as railroads, port modernization, clean energy and semiconductor supply chains and deployments, and agribusiness to further strengthen connectivity between hubs and boost their economic growth." ”
Sounds good, but is it realistic?
Image source: China Daily
Before we answer that question, it is worth recalling another much-touted connectivity initiative proposed by the United States, from which we can draw some inspiration.
In 2023, the United States announced the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) initiative, which aims to speed up the movement of goods across the region and improve communications across continents. The White House said the "milestone" arrangement would kick-start "sustainable and inclusive economic growth" across Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Despite the lack of concrete commitments, IMEC is ambitious and has the potential to weaken the Belt and Road Initiative and strengthen the United States' position as a global economic and trade player.
At the end of last year, I inspected the construction of IMEC and raised some questions about it: First, will there be practical and sustainable projects launched under the IMEC framework? Second, with China's active engagement with the Middle East, will regional countries question the U.S. commitment to peace and thus reconsider the real purpose of the U.S. proposal for IMEC? The United States' previous rejection of the draft resolution on Palestine's candidacy for full membership in the United Nations will exacerbate those concerns. In addition, I believe that the U.S. rhetoric about "democracy" and "human rights" is not accepted by the outside world, and the U.S. is no longer in a position to point fingers at other countries and tell them how to handle their internal affairs.
Therefore, I conclude that the countries concerned are very suspicious of IMEC, and that there are far fewer countries interested in participating in IMEC than the Belt and Road Initiative, and the associated budget is too small to be worth mentioning.
After about 8 months of hype on the global stage, where is IMEC now? In January, Bloomberg reported that IMEC had been shelved and that "discussions about intercontinental trade routes had almost fallen silent." One analyst noted that "Washington is fighting extremely hard against China's grand economic vision within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative."
Image source: China Daily
With that out of the way, let's go back to the LEC.
At a glance, it is clear that the LEC is rooted in geopolitics and is the product of confrontation with the United States, Japan and the Philippines against China. The Philippines' recent unstable diplomatic relations with China have prompted it to seek deeper ties with the United States. At the same time, Japan has increasingly expressed concerns about China's "aggressiveness" in the region.
Let's not forget that the Philippines joined the Belt and Road Initiative in 2018; In November 2023, Philippine Secretary of Transportation Jaime Bautista said the Philippines had withdrawn from the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), citing China's repeated delays in funding three BRI projects in the Philippines. Filipino officials have found that Japan has begun to invest more in the country to improve public transportation, so they seem confident that there is no problem leaving China behind. In fact, the leaders of the United States, the Philippines and Japan claim that the LEC was proposed to prevent the Philippines from becoming a victim of "economic coercion."
The leaders of the three countries pledged to come up with further details of the LEC this month. At the moment, the LEC has nothing specific, no data on the amount of money reviewed, no timeline for when the first project will begin, and no criteria to measure its success — nothing other than the Philippine government's hint that it will benefit from up to $100 billion in investment over the next decade.
Only the most naïve person cannot see that any agreement between the Philippines and the United States and Japan has a trap, and that is that it may be forced to participate in any future regional military conflict. The US Secretary of Defense has said that the Philippines is an important part of the US military strategy for Asia as a whole. Don't be surprised if in the near future we see more war materials and defense money flowing to the Philippines, because making the Philippines a partner of the LEC and carrying the baggage associated with it is exactly what the United States wants.
Image source: China Daily
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