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HONG KONG – At an Asian summit last week, Vice President Pence and Chinese President Xi Jinping traded beards and presented conflicting visions of an Asia-Pacific facing one of the two poles. : the United States and China.
A few hours later, the Chinese leader took the road for a charm offensive in Southeast Asia.
Xi arrived in the Philippines on Tuesday as the first Chinese leader to visit the state in 13 years. He laid a wreath at a monument to a Filipino nationalist martyr before signing dozens of agreements, including a major oil and gas exploration contract in the disputed South China Sea.
Xi's visit to the Philippines – once an unwavering ally with deep historical and cultural ties to America – shows how far Southeast Asia and the Pacific are now at the center of the growing struggle for influence between Beijing and Washington.
Nowhere is the conflict more evident than in the Philippines, where Xi is looking this week to convince President Rodrigo Duterte with generous investments.
"The Philippines is potentially the jewel in Xi's crown in his foreign policy record," said Richard Heydarian, a defense and security analyst in Manila. "No other Chinese president has been so close to eradicating the Philippines from the sphere of American influence, in terms of optics." Heydarian described the country of Southeast Asia as a crucial "turning state" in Asian geopolitics.
Student demonstrators wear left-faced masks, President Trump, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping, claiming that Duterte sells the country to the two leaders during a protest outside the presidential palace in Manila in November 20, 2018. (Aaron Favila / AP)
When Xi and Duterte announced an agreement on joint oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea on Tuesday, it was the culmination of a breathtaking turnaround for two countries plagued by bitter territorial disputes. for years before the coming to power of Duterte in 2016.
But when the strong Filipino man went to Beijing for the first time that year, he stunned the world by turning his fire towards the United States and promised to find in Xi a new partner stable that could provide billions of dollars in investments.
Mr Duterte went further last week on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Singapore, where he accused the United States of stirring up tensions with the ongoing war games and naval maneuvers in the United States. the South China Sea. The US Navy conducted exercises last week in the Philippine Sea, in international waters in the east of the Philippines.
China is "already in possession" of the disputed waters of the South China Sea, he told reporters. "China is here. It's a reality, and America and everyone should be aware that they are there. "
Many Filipino officials say that they have no choice but to take Chinese investments. They are intrigued by the reason why so few countries – notably the United States – have been willing to help, like China, in a country that badly needs infrastructural improvements.
Chinese, Japanese and Indian investments have been made in airports, metros and the telecommunications sector. But Philippine Secretary of Finance Carlos Dominguez said he was "surprised" that US candidates did not show up.
"So maybe they have no interest. If that's the case, it'll be fine, "he said in an interview. "If they want to look inward, that's their sovereign right."
The Philippines' sense of abandonment has highlighted a fundamental dilemma for the Trump administration: how to reconcile its "America first" doctrine with its effort to keep allies in its orbit – and beyond that of China.
Although Xi unveiled his Belt and Road initiative about five years ago to shell out up to $ 1 trillion of Chinese funds in Eurasia, Washington has only recently begun to realize this. to oppose it.
As Pence and US emissaries travel to Asia this month, US authorities say they have presented the Trump administration project as a possible alternative to Chinese investment: a new federal agency created last month as part of the Build Act, which could disburse $ 60 billion in infrastructure investments in developing countries.
Although the dollar amount may be exceeded by Chinese initiatives, the new program offers "transparency and integrated tools to fight corruption and ensure that no country is in debt," said W. Patrick Murphy, the most senior American diplomat in the country. East Asia and the Pacific region. "It is not a policy with regard to China, or trying to contain China, but there are elements in our approach that offer countries other ways of meet their infrastructure needs. "
Just weeks after exposing his grievances in Beijing in a keynote address in Washington, Pence again launched a vicious attack on China last week, telling the Asian public that the United States is a "best option". He unveiled initiatives including a $ 1.7 billion distribution network for Papua New Guinea, the poorest country in the region.
"If Pence's speech at the Hudson Institute was a good start for a new phase of realpolitik, the Asian highs confirmed that it was the new normal for the United States : There would be a well-organized attempt to push China back, said Nick Bisley of La Trobe University in Australia.
So far, it is unclear whether countries have fully subscribed to China's largesse, even if it far exceeds US offers. A number of new Asian governments taking power in countries such as Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Pakistan have called into question obscure agreements that previous governments had made with China.
The latest reaction came from the Maldives, an archipelago off the west coast of India, known for its idyllic beaches. The country's new president took office on Saturday and said the state's finances had been "pillaged" by the previous administration, which was overseeing the extension of ties with China in the form of major infrastructure projects. financed by the debt.
The new government of the Maldives is now considering ending a free trade agreement with China concluded last year. The trade imbalance between China and the Maldives is "so huge," Mohamed Nasheed, chairman of the new president's party, told Reuters. "China does not buy us anything. It's a one-way treaty. "
In recent weeks, the Chinese authorities have denied that their investments are an unfair "debt trap" for poor countries. In public, Xi indirectly reprimanded the United States for what he described as his "arrogance" in the region and positioned himself as a support ally for weaker developing countries.
"Instead of pointing fingers at others, it would be better to match her actions to her words and truly treat all countries, big or small, on an equal footing," the ministry spokeswoman said Sunday. Chinese Foreign Minister Hua Chunying about the United States.
Zha Daojiong, professor of international political economy at Peking University and former senior researcher at Asia Society, said the United States was historically sensitive to the level of influence they had in Southeast Asia, and that Washington has intensified its efforts there. see Japan as a rival.
Decades later, it will probably happen again.
"This is the intrinsic nature of this particular American thought on its domination or ownership of Southeast Asia," said Zha. "There is not much that China, and in fact Japan before China, can do if the United States insists on designating it as a rival."
Kaela Malig in Manila, Joanna Slater in New Delhi and Lyric Li in Beijing contributed to this report.
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