Opinion | Fatigue is rewriting the US-China soft power contest, starting in Asean
At a time when no one has bandwidth left, soft power is being won by being the partner that feels usable, steady and low-risk
For years, debates about US-China competition have defaulted to the obvious categories: ships, chips, tariffs and security pacts. Soft power was often treated as America’s home turf, the domain of Hollywood, top universities, global brands and a political ideal that still attracts even when it disappoints.
That assumption is getting riskier.
The world has entered a new emotional weather pattern: fatigue. It’s a structural condition shaped by overlapping shocks: pandemic after-effects, inflation and cost-of-living strain, wars, climate anxiety, supply chain fragility and a constant sense of political whiplash.
The clearest place to watch this shift is Southeast Asia. When asked which side the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) should align with if forced to, respondents to last year’s poll by Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute showed an almost even split, with the United States narrowly (at 52.3 per cent) edging over China.
