All the usual rituals of international summits were there: the group photographs, the gala dinners, the noticeably vibrant shirts leaders force themselves into, but eclipsing all of that at Asia’s two big meetings was some unusually forthright criticism that exposed deepening divisions rattling the region.
Front and center was the rivalry between the US and China. The two countries are locked in a widening trade dispute and their representatives used the summits to exchange barbs and maneuver to expand their influence.
Competition between the great powers is not new to the region, but over decades of war, financial crises and other setbacks, countries across Asia and the Pacific Rim have used these annual meetings to talk through such problems, usually opting to sideline disagreements in a show of unity. Consensus, not conflict, is typically the norm.
Illustration: Mountain People
This year was different.
The clash between the world’s two biggest economies is shaking the bedrock of regional amity and leaving some countries worried they will be forced to choose between Beijing and Washington.
It also might bode poorly for compromise between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) when they meet this weekend at the G20 gathering in Argentina.
The antagonisms kicked off at the ASEAN summit in Singapore, where US Vice President Mike Pence, standing in for Trump, declared that “empire and aggression have no place” in the region, a clear reference to Chinese expansion in the disputed South China Sea.
The discord carried over to the annual APEC forum in Papua New Guinea, where leaders failed for the first time in nearly 30 years of such gatherings to endorse a final joint statement.
China apparently pushed back hard against US demands for strong language against unfair trade practices.
Pence and Chinese leaders sparred at both summits, with the US vice president describing China’s militarization and expansion in the South China Sea as “illegal and dangerous.”
He accused Beijing of threatening the sovereignty of many nations and said it “endangers the prosperity of the world.”
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) smacked back, urging fellow leaders to send a positive message to markets ruffled by the trade dispute, which has seen both sides imposing punitive tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s exports and has the potential to unravel supply chains across the globe.
The acrimony might be somewhat less apparent at the G20 gathering in Buenos Aries, which will include leaders from across the globe and the focus will be global, not regional.
However, the strains between the US and China were painful enough in Singapore that the gathering’s urbane host, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍), appealed for a bit less candor and greater camaraderie, saying it would be easier if everybody was “on the same side.”
Across Asia, countries worry they will have to “choose one or the other,” he said. “I hope it does not happen soon.”
Most Asian nations are loath to make such a choice because they benefit from the rivalry, whether economically, militarily or both.
For most of them, China is their largest trading partner, but they are wary of China’s military might, and see the US and its presence in the region as a welcome counterbalance.
China’s footprint was everywhere in the Papuan capital, Port Moresby, from a showpiece boulevard and international convention center built with Chinese help to bus stop shelters sporting “China Aid”’ plaques.
A huge billboard showed Xi gazing beneficently beside Papua New Guinea’s leader.
At that meeting, Pence took aim at China’s global infrastructure drive known as the Belt and Road Initiative, suggesting that Beijing was drowning its partners in debt and infringing on their sovereignty.
He also announced that the US would join ally Australia’s plan to develop a naval base in Papua New Guinea. That followed a hush-hush working-level meeting in Singapore of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which involves the US, Japan, Australia and India, and is viewed as a challenge to China’s expanding military reach.
Xi suggested the US was bending the rules of global institutions set up after World War II, such as the WTO, and using them for “selfish agendas.”
This year’s friction was not confined to jousting between the US and China.
In Singapore, Myanmar’s leader, Burmese State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi, who usually is not put on the spot by the other ASEAN leaders, appeared grim and weary after she was sharply criticized by Pence and by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed over her nation’s treatment of ethnic Muslim Rohingya.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled killings and other violence in Myanmar and are crowded in dire conditions in camps in Bangladesh.
True to form, China saw an opportunity and responded to the criticism by having Li reach out and reaffirm Beijing’s support for Myanmar’s efforts to maintain domestic stability.
As China and the US maneuver for influence across a region stretching from India to the tip of South America, the biggest worry is that the jousting could escalate into a full-blown confrontation as Chinese and US warships and aircraft prowl the region.
A near collision of a Chinese destroyer and the USS Decatur near a disputed reef in the South China Sea in late September added to those concerns.
Still, the jostling for supremacy comes with mixed signals.
The regional summitry over, two US B-52 bombers on Monday last week flew over the South China Sea in what the US Pacific Air Forces said was a “routine training mission.”
Two days later, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan docked in Hong Kong in what was viewed as a friendly gesture — it required Beijing’s approval.
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