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    With U.S. focused on defense, China's trade and infrastructure sweep Southeast Asia

    The Biden administration hopes to make deeper inroads in Southeast Asia but lags far behind China, which has already built up major trade ties, as well as roads and a high-speed rail.
    by Julie McCarthy Jan 20, 2022 7 minutes
    A train is ready on the station during the handover ceremony of the high-speed rail project in Vientiane, Laos, connecting the city with Kunming, China, on Dec. 3, 2021.

    As the United States' strategic rivalry with China intensifies, one part of the world, Southeast Asia — where the U.S. has ceded much influence over the past two decades to China — is witnessing renewed U.S. interest under President Biden.

    Biden administration officials have made repeated trips to the region in the past year and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, is looking with both hope and trepidation as Washington deepens competition with China over technology, investment, infrastructure and security.

    In fact, Secretary of State Antony Blinken closed out 2021 with his first trip to the region as Washington's top diplomat, visiting Indonesia and Malaysia, where he asserted that "much of the planet's future will be written in the Indo-Pacific." If you combine the populations of Southeast Asian economies — estimated at 650 million — they make up the world's third largest labor force, behind only China and India. The region's middle class is expected to double by 2030.

    Blinken sparingly referenced China in his public appearances, all the while signaling that the United States is better aligned with Southeast Asia's aspirations than China is.

    "We all have a stake in ensuring that the world's most

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