China has dethroned the US to become the top alignment choice for Southeast Asians, as Washington loses ground on a range of key issues from regional economic engagement to the Israel-Hamas War, a new survey showed.
A survey of 1,994 Southeast Asians by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute published yesterday shows China’s popularity in a head-to-head race with the US climbing from 38.9 percent last year to 50.5 percent in 2024.
Among individual nations, Beijing garnered some three out of four votes in Muslim-majority Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.
Photo: China Daily via REUTERS
“Confidence in the US has waned,” the survey said. “This could be attributed partly to the escalating rivalry between China and the US, which led to an uptick in anxiety about the US’ growing strategic and political influence.”
Southeast Asian nations have largely embraced the US as a necessary security presence as US President Joe Biden’s administration ramps up military-to-military cooperation in a bid to counter Bejing’s growing defense prowess. However, the region also counts on China as a key financier and trading partner at a time regional leaders seek new investments to bolster their own economies.
Part of the issue for the US are concerns over economic engagement.
Southeast Asians are “increasingly unsure” about the effectiveness of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, a US-led endeavor to increase trade that has been criticized for its lack of meaningful market access.
China is once again seen as the most influential economic and political strategic power in the region, “outpacing the US by significant margins in both domains,” it said.
The latest poll also puts the Israel-Hamas conflict at the top of the list of the region’s geopolitical concerns, with a large proportion of respondents worried “Israel’s attack on Gaza has gone too far.”
Nearly a third of respondents were wary that the Middle East war would catalyze the rise of extremist activities, while diminished trust in international law and a rules-based order was the second-top concern.
“The ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict has emerged as a contentious issue in Southeast Asia, commanding significant attention in the region’s domestic politics,” the survey said. “Despite its geographical distance, the conflict has reverberated strongly across this diverse multi-racial and multi-religious region.”
Whether those sentiments are responsible for the US’ drop in standing among regional nations is unclear, said Bonnie Glaser, head of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund.
“Without more data it’s impossible to answer that,” she said during a presentation of the results.
The US has diplomatically and militarily backed Israel in its quest to destroy Hamas, in the aftermath of the group’s Oct. 7 attack.
While sentiments have broadly shifted toward China, tensions in the South China Sea was the second-biggest geopolitical concern in the latest study. In a hypothetical choice between the US and China, Washington still commands majority support from the Philippines at 83.3 percent and Vietnam at 79 percent, which are at the forefront of the territorial disputes with Beijing.
Broadly, “there is a growing sense of optimism among Southeast Asians regarding their future relations with China,” the report said. “The Philippines emerged as the most cautious.”
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS