US playing catch-up to China after neglecting Asean: report
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Benjamin Ho, an assistant professor at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies' China programme, said Southeast Asian leaders paid much attention to "face".
"Showing up is important as it demonstrates symbolically the significance of the region to the US," Ho said, adding that in the absence of the US, China would naturally get a greater say in regional affairs.
In the report, titled: "A Seat at the Table: The Role of Regional Multilateral Institutions in US Indo-Pacific Strategy", Susannah Patton, a foreign policy and defence fellow at the centre, wrote that China's greater attention to regional forums had allowed it to quickly convene the 2020 Asean-China meeting in Laos in February 2020.
Speaking to This Week in Asia, Patton said China had a two-pronged approach to maximising its influence through regional institutions.
"Since then, these precedents have limited Asean's collective ambition to present a united front on the South China Sea," Patton said.
However, Felix Chang, a senior fellow at the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, said Beijing's increasing high-handedness in the South China Sea had undermined Beijing's own message of engagement.
"Despite continued active Chinese diplomacy, many in the region have grown more wary of Beijing of late. Attendance at regional forums is only one of several factors that drive regional influence," Chang said.
Following a month-long stand-off, China this week told Jakarta to stop energy exploration and production drilling in the Natunas - the Southeast Asian nation's most northerly islands in the South China Sea - but Jakarta has maintained that it will not do so.
Tan See Seng, research adviser at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), said it wasn't just poor or spotty attendance on the part of the US that mattered.
Noting that the administration of US President Joe Biden had this year prioritised shoring up relationships with allies and partners through groups like the Quad - the security alliance comprising the US, Japan, India and Australia, Patton said that Washington would need to work more on boosting ties with regional multilateral institutions next year.
"Washington can do both, but this will require sustained effort and focus, and the patience to work through Asean mechanisms, despite the frustrations that its slow-moving processes can present," Patton said.
However, Tan of RSIS said the Biden administration appeared more keen to invest its time and effort in initiatives involving like-minded allies, "rather than invest in regional forums in which China is present and where pushback from the Chinese is guaranteed".
Brian Harding, a senior Southeast Asia expert at the United States Institute of Peace, said that in the months ahead, the US administration would undertake a big push to expand diplomatic engagement with Southeast Asia and with Asean as a bloc. This would include a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and an in-person Asean summit hosted by Biden.
"While China has engaged at high levels, deep concerns over its actions in the South China Sea and underwhelming delivery of infrastructure investment projects have undermined its regional engagement, most notably in the Philippines where President Rodrigo Duterte's China gambit has delivered neither infrastructure nor detente in the South China Sea," Harding said.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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