Southeast Asia turning from US to China

December 9th, 2005 at 18:41 Björn Hallberg

And this is exactly what the US fears and the sort of Chinese influence that they often try and dress up in military terms in order for it to make more sense. The the truth is much more benign, and yet damaging for the US.

Asia Times - Why Southeast Asia is turning from US to China - The United States is rapidly losing its influence in the Southeast Asia region to China, thanks to an overly narrow focus on terrorism and a propensity to place bilateral ties above multilateral relationships, according to US and Chinese analysts.

“China makes a point of dealing with Southeast Asia as a region and has a very aggressive ASEAN policy,” said Catharin Dalpino, an Asia specialist at Georgetown University who served in the Clinton administration. “This also helps its bilateral relationships with Southeast Asia quite a lot.”

And of course, the 1997 financial crisis still looms for the US as those that took the neoliberal advice of the World Bank suffered greatly, whereas China managed the situation by doing the exact opposite. That inspired confidence at the same time as the Washington prescription failed.
Some sort of US intervention seems all but inevitable. If not today, at least tomorrow. The stakes are enormous, or so at least the US perceives them.

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