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.
Why is it that when an Asian country is growing in might and is expanding the news views it as very bad. But with US imperialism and continued meddling with the domestic affairs of other nations it is just okay.
Arden Retales But why should the US honor the treaty when the Philippines can’t do anything to defend themselves? You’re asking the U.S. to fight a war for you, and you don’t even provide real base access to the U.S. military. In contrast, the U.S. vowed to support Japan in its maritime clash with China because it knows that Japan’s JSDF can stand and fight together with the U.S. The Philippines kicked the U.S military out in 1991, and China started putting up maritime territorial markers near the Philippines just a few years later. It’s a shame the way things have worked out, but allies must also support the U.S. if they expect support in return.
And then we get swallowed up like what China did to Tibet, forced to believe in communism, restructure our culture and ban our religions. :-/
US is poking the nose in every single issue and country around the world to assert its warmongering policy. US has military presence and military bases in almost all countries of the world, interfering in internal issues of countries, regime change, assassination of those leaders in foreign countries who refuse to capiculate to the whims of Uncle sam. The human history is awash with such stories. The world would be better off when US leave the world for itself and refrain from interference.
What can you say ? China is helping them economically while US previously just sent troops & weapons to occupy them ?
Dan Thomas You said USA is signatory to Law of the Seas Treaty. Where are you from? Mars?
Why Hasn’t the US Signed the Law of the Sea Treaty?
https://www.voanews.com/a/united-states-sign-law-sea-treaty/3364342.html
We don’t trust the Japanese.although they have given us too many financial assistance I’m the fast.
Before the ww2 we are not the enemy of the Japanese .
The Japanese attacks pearl harbour and then invaded and destroyed our country. They killed thousands of Filipinos and rape our women. They also looted our Treasury.
Although the Japanese now were so friendly to us we still can’t trust them.
That’s the sad part of the treaty.the Chinese have developed so fast , in their economy and their military.capabilities..
And the Americans can no longer say that they’re more superior than the Chinese PLA.
The American’s have to many enemies worldwide. Although they have military bases all over the world , they can’t afford to have conflict with the Chinese PLA and the Russian Federation.
Dan Thomas :
Nuno Cardoso da Silva above wants you to forget what Japanese did to the other Asians before and during WWII some 80 years ago, and you want the Vietnamese not to forget what the Chinese did to Vietnam thousands years ago. What a moron you are.
The last Bataan Death March survivor Ramon Regalado died in December 28, 2017. Do you know anything about the infamy attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March? The US POW labor camps in Taiwan and Japan? Where they worked until they dropped dead? How soon you forget.
David Glazener US isnt serious with its Mutual.Defense Treaty with Philippines. It wont drop a single American blood for its former colony. Thats the cold reality of it all. Ph once believed that US will reciprocate what it did for US when it was attacked by the Japs in WW2. FILIPINOS were gravely mistaken. And they learned it first hand when Obama didnt lift a finget during Ph Ch Scarborough standoff. Aquino, then president was an absolute disaster and Obama showed Americas resolve in honoring its Treaty with allies.
There.
CarpeDiem DejaVu – So, in your opinion there are genetically superior nations, inferior nations, good nations and evil nations… You are on the right path to get a Nobel Prize on genetics…
Nuno Cardoso da Silva : You have failed awfully in your analysis as to the reason Japan is not favoured among East Asians 80 years after the end of the 2nd WW. Like the leopard, the spots are in their genes.
Checkmated by North Korea, quagmired in Afghanistan, outmaneuvered in Syria, does the collosus stand on sand?
Beware Michael Chan! We had a "multi-polar World" at the beginning of the 20th century and it led to the First World War. Likewise prior to World War Two. Were it not for that country’s idiotic politics I would be well content to live in a World with uncontested US leadership.
Nuno Cardoso da Silva , it is 70 years now. I still remember members of my family n friends been killed n tortured. What Japan can do is just admit their atrocities. Then we can forgive. Kist like what Gernany did. That is all. Bit every year their leaders pay respect n gave tributes to those murderers. Openly.
Hating Japanese across generations will not help anyone. The hatred must stop sometime.
Professor Nuno is far wrong about non-aggressive Japan if he only reads his history well to see how many times the Japs have been unprovoked aggressors and their cruelties in war to civilllians. How can Nuno dream of Asians cooperating with Japan after that horrible atrocities and yet the Japs have not admitted their wrongs including the comfort women issues. They even chaned text books to provide fake history to their young. Given a chance to rearm thanks to you and America you will witness another Japnese initiated war. They day the Japs sincerely acknowledge their crueties and be truly contrite their former victims can then can move on and heal the past and move on.
Dont dream about America being the knight in armour. They have lost their moral authority after their war mongering last 2 decades all over the world – changing regimes at will. creating terrorists after the failed states and anarchies out of the states they have invaded – with fake news of weapons of mass DECEPTION
That is 100% the Philippines fault. It’s your lands. But with such a screwed up banana Republic for a government that is far too busy looting the coffers and stealing from the average citizen instead of build build build, that is what you got.
America cannot just step in. The Honorable President Duterte can ask for help and America will be obliged by the defense pact in place. It is no longer just a territory dispute when military equipment is involved. You were invaded through military action and that in itself is an act of war.
KS Chin – I take your point but that sort of distrust must be overcome for the sake of the whole Asia. No Japanese alive today bears any responsibility for Japan’s aggressions of 80 years ago, and the present generation has a right to be treated less suspiciously. It is true that the Japanese are still a very inward looking nation, but that might change if they weren’t systematically accused of things which happened before they were born. Are the Japanese a very likable people? Maybe not, but there isn’t anything preventing a mutually beneficial relationship with them.
KS Chin whose definition of middle class? Percentage is what you say? and on whose dollars? That will change soon. Trade will change soon. No more one way deals, no more stealing the West’s patents, movies, secrets. Then see what ya get.