As the US and China compete for influence in the Indo-Pacific region, that has become the theatre of US-China emulation, China on Monday, 11 July 2022, supplicated Southeast Asian nations to avoid being used as “chess pieces in major power rivalries”.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, addressing the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) secretariat in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, said many countries in the region felt constrained to take sides.
“We should insulate this region from geopolitical calculations and the trap of the law of the jungle, from being used as chess pieces in major power rivalry and from coercion,” he said.
“The future of our region should be in our own hands,” he added.
“The core elements are to support ASEAN centrality, uphold the existing regional corporation framework, respect each other’s legitimate rights and interests in the Asia Pacific instead of aiming to antagonise or contain the other side,” he said.
Wang also called on ASEAN countries to oppose “fake regional cooperation that keeps certain countries out”
Wang’s statements came after the conclusion of the G20 summit in Jakarta this month (July 2022) and in the wake of heightened US efforts to set up trade blocks in the region that exclude China.
China, in turn, is making solid efforts to counter the US Indo-Pacific strategy, that was launched in May 2022. In early July 2022, Wang Yi made a two-week diplomatic blitz of the South-east Asian region that culminated in a pledge from Thailand to complete a USD 5.2 billion rail link between the two countries and also sought reassurances from the Philippines to re-establish a “golden age” of ties.
Wang also reaffirmed China’s support for the military-ruled Myanmar, which the US has sought to isolate, by attending a meeting designed to manage the use of the Mekong River. Myanmar consented to hasten the development of its own economic corridor with China and implement a cross-border power agreement.
China’s current zealous diplomatic effort is not only restricted to South-east Asia. In recent months, China signed more than 40 bilateral deals with Pacific Island nations, including the security tie-up between China and the Solomon Islands, that was ratified in April 2022.
The US has responded with US Vice President Kamala Harris announcing a fishing pact that will infuse USD 600 million into the Pacific Islands, while also promising to set up new embassies in Kiribati and Tonga, and further engagement. The declarations were made at the Pacific Islands Forum that was convened this month (July 2022).
The US is making up for decades-long dormancy with a renewed bid to propitiate Indo-Pacific countries following China’s lengthy (over the years), proactive and gargantuan endeavour to garner influence in the region. The recent US Indo-Pacific strategy saw US President Joe Biden host leaders of the ASEAN in Washington in May 2022, which was followed by his visit to Tokyo, Japan for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) meet, and also to Seoul, Korea. In addition, he launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) in the same month.
The IPEF is a group of 12-member countries, including India, Japan, Australia, Korea, New Zealand, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, that seeks to set international rules on the digital economy, supply chains, decarbonization and regulations applying to workers.
It is not a free trade agreement; and it is not a security pact, like Quad or AUKUS. But it can definitely be termed as a move by the US to raise its economic profile and create another counterbalance to China within Asia. It’s a broad plan designed to help expand the US′ “economic leadership” in the Indo-Pacific region.
In addition, Quad members (the US, Australia, India and Japan), in May 2022, committed USD 50 billion for sustainable and demand-driven infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific and announced an Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) surveillance initiative to combat illegal fishing by the Chinese.
The IPMDA initiative is a new dimension to the state of vigilance in the Indo-Pacific. The IPMDA will share commercially available satellite data and alert smaller South-east Asian states if there are territorial intrusions or if ships carry out illicit activity such as illegal fishing, smuggling or piracy in waters within their maritime boundaries.
Also, under the leadership of the US, the G7 group of rich democracies, on 26 June 2022, made a bid to countervail China’s formidable Belt and Roads Initiative (BRI) by announcing some USD 600 billion for global infrastructure programmes in poor countries.
The Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), unveiled by US President Joe Biden and G7 allies from Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and France, plans on making huge investments in key areas, in fact, everything from roads to harbours, around the world, something that China has had a massive head start in undertaking.
US President Joe Biden said the target was for the United States to bring USD 200 billion to the table, with the rest of the G7 to fund another USD 400 billion, by 2027.
This move, though a late bid, plans to offset the massive strides made by the Chinese BRI over the past decade or two. Over the last 18 years, China has granted or loaned money to 13,427 infrastructure projects worth USD 843 billion across 165 countries, of which 27.6 percent was in ASEAN alone (as of 2019). In 2020, ASEAN became the largest trading partner of China, surpassing the European Union, with the bilateral trade volume hitting US$732 billion. China is the largest trading partner of most Indo-Pacific countries from Australia to Japan, and Korea to India. And China’s BRI is one of the largest infrastructure and investment projects in history, covering 65% of the world’s population and 40% of the global gross domestic product as of 2017.
The US is now making a concerted effort to re-establish its pre-eminence on the global stage and the Indo-Pacific region, in particular, and to salvage lost turf. The Indo-Pacific strategy and the PGII are two major steps in that direction. Defence pacts like AUKUS and Quad have also been made manifest in recent years to checkmate China militarily in the Indo-Pacific.
In fact, what began as a `trade war’ and `tech war’ between the US and China over the past few years, has now snowballed beyond the obvious tussle for military superiority into a war of ideas and ideology. Highlighting the geostrategic thinking behind the PGII plan, Biden said such projects “deliver returns for everyone, including the American people and the people of all our nations.” Around the world, the role of China’s democratic rivals is “a chance for us to share our positive vision for the future” and for other countries to “see for themselves the concrete benefits of partnering with democracies,” he said.
China, in turn, has come up with its Global Security Initiative (GSI), a platform of principles on international affairs and diplomacy that, Chinese President Xi Jinping asserts, can make the world a safer place. Included under the GSI are some proposals that should invoke goodwill —countries should resolve their disputes through dialogue, respect one another’s differences, and be considerate of varying national interests to achieve “security for all,”
It is the reality of the day that the US and China are embroiled in an adversarial feud to dominate the world and to establish the norms that govern global affairs. The US has made it its prerogative to establish a “rules-based” global order, to obstruct Beijing’s belligerence in the Indo-Pacific. As US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in May 2022: “Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years.”
China is keen to embark on a world order that, it emphasises, will engender mutual benefit and prosperity for all, without bringing into the picture the unpalatable (to it) tale of human rights, and through non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. China feels undermined by the US debate that democracy is the sole legitimate form of government.
In the wake of the US Democratic Summit held last year (2021), the Chinese foreign ministry had this to say: “Democracy has long become a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ used by the US to interfere in other countries.” It also accused the US of having “instigated ‘colour revolutions” overseas. The ministry also claimed the summit was organised by the US to “draw lines of ideological prejudice, instrumentalise and weaponise democracy… (and) incite division and confrontation.”
Instead, Beijing vowed to “resolutely resist and oppose all kinds of pseudo-democracies”. Ahead of the summit, China ramped up a propaganda blitz criticising US democracy as corrupt and a failure. Instead, it touted its own version of “whole-process people’s democracy”.
This ideological divide, coupled with the competition for economic, diplomatic and military superiority could be nagging to the rest of the world.
Most other nations of the world, in general, and the Indo-Pacific, in particular, would not like to be bludgeoned by either side but would like to hedge in times of intense rivalry, notwithstanding their own territorial disputes with China. ASEAN nations have made it all too clear that they would like to maintain a dynamic equipoise between the US and China. And, can the Pacific Island nations now feel buttressed and forget their disgruntlements, considering decades of neglect of the region by the US and its allies?
montes-musings.blog 
very good analysis
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