US can lose out to China
Manik Mehta Friday,July 27,2007
Experts caution that the United States can lose its foothold in Southeast Asia, the bulwark of which is the 10-member nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), if it ignored the region and focused only on fighting - military and verbal - wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea and elsewhere. China, which provides technical and economic assistance, and also market accessibility to the Asean countries, earns a lot of goodwill amongst the region's business community as well as the political elite. The US administration seems to have earned notoriety for its habit of cancelling scheduled visits and meetings; this has frustrated the Asean leaders who feel that their region is of little or no consequence to Washington. The cancellation of two scheduled trips in three years by the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has fed suspicions amongst the Asean leaders that Washington is losing interest in the region. Rice, who is soon visiting the Middle East to follow up a major US peace initiative, recently cancelled her participation in the forthcoming meeting of the Asean Regional Forum in Manila, Philippines, next month. The foreign ministers of the Asean group, China, South and North Korea, Australia, the European Union, Japan, India, New Zealand, Canada and Russia sit side-by-side with the Secretary of State, and discuss important issues. "It's a unique opportunity for her to meet so many foreign ministers under one roof, and I am surprised she let it slip by for the second time," remarked a New York based Asean diplomat who insisted on anonymity. Surin Pitsuwan, a former foreign minister of Thailand, who is expected to become Asean's next secretary general, recently said that Rice's no-show announcement, which follows President George W. Bush's cancellation of a scheduled visit to Singapore in September on his way to attend the Asia-Pacific Forum in Australia, sent the "wrong signal" to the region. The US business community in the Asean region is also uneasy about China's growing influence in the region, manifested in a number of high-profiled projects, including the proposed Asean-China Information Superhighway which is described as a "crown jewel" of that country's economic ties with the Asean group. The second Asean-China Information Superhighway Working Group Meeting, recently held in Gadong, discussed a feasibility study report of the project. Both sides believe that the ambitious project would open up a "new world" for the partners. The much-touted "crown jewel" project will give plenty of mileage to China in a region where the US presence has, traditionally, been ubiquitous in almost all aspects of life. The China-Asean Expo (CAE) which will be held in Nanning, Guangxi, China, in the third week of October, is expected to provide a strong impetus to China's ties with the Asean group because, according to Nong Rong, the deputy secretary of the CAE secretariat, it is a "gateway" to China's huge market. America, many Asean scholars say, needs an urgent wake-up call in the region which is not only a huge market but also has abundant natural resources. The region also encompasses the disputed Spratly Islands which are claimed by China and Taiwan, along with several Asean members. The islands, located in the world's busiest shipping lanes, are of great strategic importance for China because of their huge deposits of oil, gas and other minerals. According to China's Geology and Mineral Resources Ministry, the Spratly area holds oil and natural gas reserves of some 17.7 billion tonnes, far exceeding the 13 billion tonnes held by Kuwait, making it the fourth largest reserve bed in the world. The Philippines, which discovered oil in March 1976 off the coast of Palawan within the Spratly Islands territory, meets some 15 per cent of its petroleum consumption from these oil fields. China, which has eyed the Spratly Islands to meet its future energy needs, will seek a compromise, rather than a military conflict, with the other claimants to secure a steady and trouble-free oil and gas supply for its urgent development priorities. To many, China's meteoric rise as a military and economic superpower seems unstoppable. It is time America got its act together and took interest in the Asean region. If it failed do so, it would soon discover that that it has lost precious ground to a formidable rival in the making.
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