Bilahari Kausikan

Opinion | Southeast Asia’s complex dance with China, US explored in new book

David Shambaugh’s ‘Where Great Powers Meet’ offers a nuanced look at Asean states’ diplomatic manoeuvres amid the US-China rivalry, Bilahari Kausikan says in this book review

In a country-by-country analysis, Shambaugh shows how Southeast Asian relations with Washington have in most cases expanded, even as Beijing’s footprint has grown

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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, right, proposes a toast to Chinese President Xi Jinping during a state banquet in Manila in 2018. Photo: AP

Bilahari Kausikan

Published: 10:00am, 3 Jan 2021Updated: 11:05am, 3 Jan 2021

As a contiguous, big and growing power, China will always have significant influence in Southeast Asia. But for precisely the same reasons – size, contiguity and economic weight – Beijing will always arouse anxieties in the region. Big powers have a responsibility to reassure small countries on their periphery. China has not fulfilled this responsibility.

From the end of the Hu Jintao era, and even more so under Xi Jinping, China’s actions in Hong Kong, the South China and East China Seas, the upper reaches of the Mekong, the Taiwan Strait, the Himalayas, as well as Beijing’s attempts to use trade to coerce South Korea and Australia, have fanned anxieties into active concerns.

Significant influence is not necessarily dominant or exclusive influence. No Southeast Asian country is ever going to shun China. On the contrary, almost all countries want good or at least stable relations with China. But concerns about Chinese behaviour make it highly unlikely that any are ever going to de-emphasise other relationships in order to cultivate China.

As the strategic crossroads between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Southeast Asia has for centuries been the arena where the interests of major powers have intersected and sometimes collided. The United States and China are only the latest in a long list of rivals.

This has embedded the instinct to simultaneously hedge, balance, and bandwagon in Southeast Asia’s diplomatic DNA. There has been many a misstep and stumble along the way. But the natural multipolarity of a strategic crossroads, where there has always been more than one major power present, has facilitated this instinct.

Few Southeast Asian countries have thought it necessary – or needed – to neatly align all their interests across the defence, economic, and sociocultural domains with any single major power. To preserve autonomy and extract maximum benefit, Southeast Asian countries may bandwagon in one domain, hedge in another, and balance in a third.

02:19

Philippine President Duterte admits being at a loss getting Beijing to honour South China Sea ruling

Southeast Asian diplomacy is naturally promiscuous, not monogamous. The steps of the region’s diplomatic dance are intricate, often intended for a domestic as well as international audience.