DON'T FORCE AMERICA TO CHOOSE

Southeast Asia Needs America More than America Needs It

Recently there has been a kind of drum beat from leading think tanks and pundits warning that America must not “force ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) to choose between America and China.”

This is typically accompanied by a tut tut to the effect that China after all is ASEAN’s largest trading partner and America needs to do some kind of new trade deal to open its markets further to ASEAN exports.

So let’s turn a spotlight on ASEAN and the area of the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca and see who is doing what to whom. Let’s begin with the fact that the major portion of wealth in all of the ASEAN countries is controlled by ethnic Chinese citizens of those countries. Only Singapore has a majority ethnic Chinese population. For instance, the ethnic Chinese population of Indonesia is about 4 percent of the total if one includes part Chinese. However, this 4 percent in Indonesia or 2 percent in the Philippines or 22 percent in Malaysia control by far the largest portion of the wealth of those countries.

There is no love lost in any of the ASEAN countries (Singapore excepted) between the rich, ethnic Chinese citizens and the Malay, Javanese, Austronesian, and other citizens of the ASEAN countries. The history of the past seventy years is full of pogroms against the ethnic Chinese of these countries.

In recent years, particularly in the wake of President Obama’s failure to act to prevent China from militarizing the South China Sea, the fishermen of all the ASEAN nations have had their boats smashed and their lawful fisheries overrun by Chinese fishing fleets. The Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia have seen islands that are rightfully their sovereign territory occupied by the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).

While not a treaty ally of the United States, Singapore, at its request, hosts a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier Battle Group. It feels safer with the U.S. Navy nearby. The United States is not showing off its power by shooting rockets over Taiwan or surrounding it with warships. It is the PLA and the PLAN and the PLAAF that are stretching their muscles for all to see. It is also interesting to note that Singapore, having little territory of its own on which to conduct military maneuvers, trains its army in Taiwan. Let me emphasize that. Not in China, but in TAIWAN which China would surely have seized long ago but for presence in the region of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

The truth is that ASEAN is a free rider on the U.S. military presence in the region. In the absence of the U.S. presence, Beijing would long ago have brought much greater “discipline” to the area.

One ASEAN Prime Minister whose name must remain unknown told me recently that his country is subject to implicit discipline by China because Beijing at any moment can stop the Chinese tourists from coming or embargo imports from his country as a measure of discipline against his and his government’s policies.

This leads us to the big question of trade. We are constantly told by apologists and by Beijing that China is the biggest trading partner of all the ASEAN countries with the possible exception of Singapore. This trope is meant to imply that China is somehow creating jobs and enriching these countries in a way that the U.S. is not.

Trade, of course, goes both ways. There are imports and exports. The reader should not be surprised to learn that China has a trade surplus with all of the ASEAN countries except Singapore. They are all creating jobs and wealth in China by buying its exports and not matching those with exports of their own. China is not enriching them, it is impoverishing them.

You can see that in the composition of the trade. In the past, Malaysia, for example, tested and packaged semiconductors that were then exported to China. Now the semiconductors are packaged and tested in China and Malaysia exports only commodities like palm oil and petroleum to China. The technological quality of Malaysia’s exports is deteriorating with regard to China.

Let us now take a look at the ASEAN trade situation with the United States. Almost all of them have a big trade surplus with America. It is America that is creating jobs and wealth for them, not China. Of course, the EU, Australia, Japan, and South Korea also buy from ASEAN.

But to argue that America must not force ASEAN to make a choice between it and China is to have the shoe on the wrong foot. For its own safety and welfare, ASEAN needs to make sure America sticks around. America needs ASEAN a great deal less than ASEAN needs America.