Amid the sound, fury and threats, Asia’s biggest geopolitical winner was China in 2017. This couldn’t have been achieved without the missteps of US President Donald Trump’s administration and the stunning rapprochement between Beijing and Manila.
By and large, China is increasingly seen as the preponderant regional power by a majority of Southeast Asian countries. This is as much a reflection of Beijing’s strategic acumen as a result of the strategic mistakes made by Washington and smaller regional players.
In a short time, China has managed not only to divide and rule the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), but also leverage the regional bloc as a de facto shield against its strategic rivals, namely the US, and particularly in relation to the South China Sea disputes.
Back in 2013, then newly-installed Chinese President Xi Jinping launched in a high-profile speech his “peripheral diplomacy” initiative which laid out plans for winning over China’s near neighborhood, no easy task considering Beijing’s often treacherous history in the region.
The initiative was an important recognition of growing regional opposition, aided by Washington’s “pivot” to Asia strategy, to China’s growing maritime assertiveness in adjacent waters.
In particular, the Philippines and Vietnam stepped up their efforts at constraining China’s expanding footprint in the South China Sea, while Japan, Australia and Singapore welcomed America’s promised larger military, and especially naval, presence in the region.
In response, Xi called for a strategy that would “promote China’s political relationship with peripheral countries.” It was necessary for China, Xi explained, to “solidify economic bonds” and “deepen security cooperation” with “peripheral countries.”
Four years on, China’s leader is looking at a significantly more auspicious strategic environment.
While the proactive policy has paid diplomatic dividends, it also owes to the dramatic reorientation in the foreign policy of other relevant actors, namely the United States and the Philippines.
Trump’s decision to recast America’s regional policy in what are widely viewed among regional leaders as more isolationist terms has alienated longtime friends and allies alike.
His “America First” emphasis on protectionist economic policies, punitive trade actions and often tempestuous policy pronouncements that are seldom followed with meaningful action have undermined confidence in America’s leadership.
According to a Pew Research survey which aimed to measure global confidence in America’s leadership under Trump’s presidency across 37 nations, there was a 42% year-on-year drop compared to the last year of Barack Obama’s administration.
In Southeast Asia’s largest nation, Indonesia, confidence in the American president’s ability to make good decisions declined by 41%, followed by the Philippines (-25%) and Vietnam (-13%). All three countries have a strong interest in counterbalancing China’s fast rise.
Trump’s decision to nix the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact, meanwhile, has left America with no major regional economic initiative on the table.
In contrast, China has offered multiple regional development programs, ranging from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSR) to the related US$1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
It has also supported the finalization of negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) free trade agreement, which aims to further integrate the economies of 16 nations along the Asia-Pacific rim.
While Trump openly rejected multilateral free trade in favor of bilateral pacts during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in November, Xi described globalization as an “irreversible historical trend.”
At the event, staged symbolically in formerly isolated Vietnam, Xi underlined his country’s commitment to a “multilateral trading regime and practice” that allows “developing members to benefit more from international trade and investment.”
Indeed, China has deftly leveraged its rising economic influence and America’s perceived retreat into big new stores of geopolitical capital.
This has been most evident in the case of key US strategic allies such as the Philippines, which under President Rodrigo Duterte has welcomed closer economic ties to China in exchange for geopolitical acquiescence.
Duterte has diminished US strategic ties, witnessed in downgraded bilateral war games and rejection of US plans to build facilities at the Bautista Air Base on the island of Palawan that overlooks the South China Sea. The moves have no doubt pleased Beijing and irked Washington.
Duterte’s reorientation towards China, a distinct shift from the previous Benigno Aquino’s more confrontational, pro-US approach, is apparently popular. One recent Pew Research Center survey shows that Beijing is rapidly closing its soft power gap with Washington, even among the staunchest pro-American nations.
Though Filipinos still broadly favor the US over China, the number who prefer stronger economic relations with China has increased from 43% to 67%, the survey shows. In contrast, the number of those who favored a tougher stance against China’s maritime assertiveness has declined from 41% to 28%.
As this year’s rotational chairman of Asean, Duterte openly advocated for a softer stance on the South China Sea disputes, vetoing calls for tougher criticism of China’s massive reclamation activities and militarization of the contested maritime area.
If anything, the Philippines echoed China’s narrative that the “general situation in the South China Sea is positive”, blaming instead “outside parties”, namely the US and its leading Asian allies Japan and Australia, for stoking tensions in the name of freedom of navigation.
The Duterte administration also rejected calls by Japan, Australia and the US to raise its landmark arbitration win in 2016 at The Hague on its South China Sea claims to pressure China into more law-based compliance.
In a blatant rebuff of plans for a larger American military presence in the region, Duterte maintained late in the year that the maritime disputes are “better left untouched” by non-claimant states.
In effect, the Philippines argued that the issue should be exclusively addressed on a bilateral basis, where China has the clear upper-hand.
Rather than taking a cohesive multilateral stand, Asean under the Philippines chairmanship continued to promote long-running negotiations for an elusive binding Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, even if there is little assurance that a substantive agreement will ever be finalized or meaningfully upheld.
Under Duterte’s rotational leadership, Asean effectively handed China strategic impunity in the area. No wonder then this year saw China push ahead with massive reclamation activities across various disputed land features, further tightening its grip on the South China Sea while forging new strategic footholds that will be hard to uproot.
In many ways, Trump and Duterte were the year’s greatest gifts to China’s vision of a fast coalescing Sino-centric regional order.
Roger Cheng lol, SF is enlightened only when it comes to trannies. USA is signatory to Law of the Seas Treaty. At the end of WWII, did you know what happened in the agreements with China(regarding the sea)? splain that to me and then Mr Chen, I will know if you know what you are talking about or not. And for Russia, just sighting analogy. That’s ok though, you are ESL, understood.
More white man spins. Spin spin spin ;)…
How funny the white man, they just can’t come to terms with “THE LOGIC” that, where there are Forts Guams, where there are Forts Okinawas, where are Forts Subic Bays, where there are Forts Clark AFBs, and, where there are Forts Aussie Outbacks stocked pack full of Pershing’s armed with nukes all pointed point blank at China 24/7 that it’s only “LOGICAL” of China to have Fort Spratly’s, that it’s only “LOGICAL” for China have Forts Parcels, and very very likely Forts Daiyutai and much more same going up in the near future.
White mans, they have such BIG NOSES…
Read non-Chinese news. There are more millionaires now in China than US. The middle class in China is bigger than the population of US.
Nuno Cardoso da Silva Read the news. Lets say China is biased so dont read it. But read the Korean news, the Spore news, the Malaysian news, the philippines news. Its not settled. There are many people in these countries who suffered from brutal treatment at a family/personal level. The track record of Japan in resolving this is spotty and Abe’s right wing nationalist govt really has little desire in admiting their roles. By and large the Japanese people has not been targeted so things has moved on but the insitution of the Japanese nationlist government is the problem. Easy for you to observe from afar as you did not experience the suffering.
That is the assumption; hardly a known reality. What happens without the US Navy maintaining FON on the high seas and the US Market? China has never been able to stand heights before! What makes you think this just 20+ years of increasing upward climb will continue. China is not a naturally united nation. It requires a dominant hand—force to maintain unity!
Why the fundamental assumption that China will continue united and on the rise?
Dan Thomas, I find you to be very hysterical with what you are saying with not proof Letwhatsoever. You give me the impression that you are repeating very probably from the CNN, Fox news.
Let me tell you If USA wants to intrude in Asia¨s business and continue to bully China, she should first sign the Law of the Sea Treat like many other countries. Otherwise, what she is doing, it is hollow and, hypocritical.
Your hopping from accusing Russia and then going back to China and back is very schizophrenic.
You surprise me when I read that you are from San Francisco where a lot of enlightened people live on your area.. I guess you are one of those odd exceptions.
The reality is that this is the Chinese Century——–like the last Century was the America’s———-that is the cycle of LIFE!!
oh, but you digress. Only the wealthiest Chinese of the 1.5 billion of them can afford to come here. You see only a microcosom when they come here. The average good salary of a worker in China is $200-300 as month. Ya think they are the ones coming here and spending thousands and thousands of dollars or millions to buy homes in Kalifornia with cash? USA is not perfect, just we are the best thing going. BTW, about half of illegal immigration is visa overstays. About third of of them are chinese.
Boy!!! You certainly are full of American brainwashed propaganda!!! You gotta face reality, face the truth. No nation can be what you said and have more billionaires than the U.S. There are more cars, more freeways, bridges, bullet trains,… in China than in the U.S. More and more Chinese are coming to America for vacations… and they are returning to China afterward. China can’t be that bad as you said when their people go back home by their own free-will!!!
KS Chin – WW II ended 72 years ago. How much longer must we wait until all those East Asia countries forgive Japan and realize that Japan wouldn’t do now what it did 80 years ago? China is so big, so populous and so ingenious that it will always dominate East and South East Asia. Japan is the only country which could give those countries an alternative when confronted with China’s power. An alternative less dominant and less imposing. Worth thinking about…
Kooks here at AT. Erdogan chose his path. Been paying attention at all? China treats their own people like slaves but just a bit better than NOKO. China convicts people based on their blood type, then sells the organs during the execution. China broke the rule of law on creating islands to claim economic and strategic advantages over all their neighbors. Law of the Sea Treaty was written just for this purpose! Remember Tiananmen Square! Now figures are coming out that at least 10,000 people were murdered and executed there. Nice place eh? China took control of places like Vietnam a thousand years ago and will never let them go. Similar to Russia and the Ukraine and Baltic states. They enslave the locals. Ship them to Siberia, kill them, then replace them with ethnic Russian and magically you now have Russia lite in a formerly non Russian country just like Crimea. The military in China owns and operates corporations that generate lots of money that goes back right into their own programs. Weird that they fund themselves. Who controls the Chinese military? Xi? Doubt it.
The Article says it all and explains quite clearly why Asian countries are choosing China over the US. Although I am certain that that is not the impression that the author was trying to us with..In every mention of the US and what it wants to do in Asia it only mentions more military bases, more war, more military domination. And China? It is offering infrastructure, economic development , peace and security. Not much of a choice really. Why would the Philipinos want bigger and better US military facilities when they can get help with infrastructure, schools, roads, railways and help in becoming a more prosperous country?
it would have been better if China stops its militarization and island building in SCS and make concessions with my country Philippines as it create tensions, whether they claim it with historical evidence or not but because they are signatory of UNCLOS and practice generosity with its neighbors. i assure you many of filipinos will support china to achieve its regional order if this does happen because i am also one of those 67% and 28% mentioned in the article. it is not even that hard to deny the prosperity the chinese is bringing to us and the west that disrupting diplomatic relations between countries. as long as China will not forcefully export its ideologies just as it promised unlike certain countries with their "brand" of democracy which proved to be ineffective. yes, i said brand because i still believe people should choose its own leaders, not the elite liberals who commit treasons to its own people by stealing what is rightfully ours, who only makes decision based on what the western world would like not the interest of its people, which is probably funded by these certain countries during the elections. i support China, I may not assure you the whole country shares my sentiment, that is probably because of ingrained low self-worth of my fellow to look up to the developed countries, and also because of increasingly nationalistic views against China that is being portrayed by our biased media regarding the SCS disputes. please give a chance to the current administration one last generous compromise so we can both embrace peace and prosperity.
if there are people offended, sorry for you but i am just practicing my freedom of expression.
it is my own sentiment which may not be the same as others but i believe someone out there share the same thing as i am and i hope there is more than i would have expected.
Jalan free itself from the trauma of WWII? In case you have read the papers, its the Asian countries who are trying to free themselves of the WWII trauma creaded by Japan. Japan does not have many friends in Asia, I can tell you that. They like the Japanese money, thats for sure. So talk about Chinese aggression does not get much truck from many Asians who have seen or suffered from the aggression of Japan.
Well, the US cant do much about it then because it was the Vietnamese who started it. China just did it bigger and faster.
Balancing China’s power in South East Asia should be a task for Japan, not the US. Japan should free itself from the whole trauma of WW II, become a nuclear power and stimulate cooperation in all fields between South East nations and Japan. A non-aggressive Japan could be seen as a preferable partner to a far too assertive China. And the US could then withdraw east of Hawaii, leaving Asia alone.
I rather think that 2017 marks the end of the American-centric World and the ushering of a multi-polar World.
America’s greatest blunder this century was allowing the Chinese to build those island bases in the South China Sea. There is no turning back now. The Philippines can afford to be confrontational then against China because it knew that the closest air or naval base of the Chinese were a thousand kilometers or more away, meaning it will be a logistical nightmare for them to attack the Philippines. That is no longer the case now. The Philippines is lucky to have Duterte at this opportune time. The belligerent approach will no longer work to the Philippines’ advantage. We have to get back at diplomacy and seek common ground with the perceived enemy and strengthen economic ties for the peace and stability of the region. That is the only way everbody can progress.
If not, the US make a major foreign policy change, the Asian markets are lost. Asia need tourism, trade and investments. China can offer all of this and more. The US bullying, regime changes, covert operations, and wars does not go home well in Asia. Asia have had too many bad experiences of US “interventions”. The US just must accept the fact the US has to play on equal terms in the Asian markets.
The way the US stabbed President Erdogan and Turkey in the back, has not gone un-noticed in Asia. Neither has the US wars in the Middle East and North Africa. President Dutere was saved from the US coup plans by his huge popularity, even the US expats living in the Philippines loves Duterte. What China should do is to invest more around the newly built infrastructure in Asia, strengthen AIIB, and prepare for an escalating sanctions, trade and finance war with the US. China should continue to reduce poverty; reduced poverty will boost the region’s growth.