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Ruffling feathers

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This week, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton makes a historic high-profile visit to Myanmar even as Asians assess a flurry of US moves in the region. The Obama administration has energetically re-engaged Asia when, facing many domestic challenges, a post-crisis America might easily have turned inward.

An engaged America is better than an isolated one. But Asians question the nature and intention of the American return to the region. Signals are not altogether benign.

Hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Hawaii and becoming the first American leader to participate in the East Asia Summit might seem the usual practice in international negotiations. But controversies with China made headlines and President Barack Obama's Australian stopover marked establishing a military base with 2,500 marines on the Asian periphery.

Many - especially in Beijing - read the American return to the region as being aimed at countering China. Some welcome this, as Beijing has triggered sensitivities in the past year. This is not just in the South China Sea but also on the Korean Peninsula and with Japan over the Senkaku, or Diaoyu, Islands. The Obama administration's return to Asia is the result of a quite deliberate build-up over the past two years.

On his first trip in 2009, Obama promised to be the first 'Pacific president'. Yet the American media accused him of being too soft in dealing with Asia. One US commentator likened his visit to Beijing to the young John F. Kennedy being pushed around by hard-nosed communists.

Since then, the US has reinvigorated old alliances and strengthened political and security ties with India, Indonesia and Vietnam. Washington has also re-energised trade through the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This aims to integrate nine Apec economies, with Japan now keen to join. Yet the initiative has been strongly criticised by Beijing, where many perceive an intention to shut China out.

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