Southeast Asia’s China anxieties are rising despite coronavirus aid, most would side with US: study

While region’s elites acknowledge China has been of more help than the US in the pandemic, their concerns over Beijing’s clout have grown, study finds
Almost nine in 10 are worried about Beijing’s rising influence, and more than six in 10 now say the bloc should side with the US over China if forced to pick

US-China relations

Bhavan Jaipragas

Published: 4:26pm, 10 Feb 2021

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A new survey suggests that while Southeast Asian elites acknowledge China has done more to help the region fight the coronavirus than its rivals such as the United States, they are more anxious about Beijing’s rising regional clout now than they were before the pandemic.

The poll of 1,032 academics, government officials and business elites by the Asean Studies Centre at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute found that not only had vaccine diplomacy done little to assuage longer term anxieties over China’s growing influence, in fact, such concerns had heightened.

A little more than 88 per cent of the respondents from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) said they were worried about China’s growing “regional and political influence” compared to just over 85 per cent who were asked the same question a year ago.

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The annual survey – now in its third edition – was conducted from November 18 to January 10, after Joe Biden’s victory in the November 6 US presidential election. Most of those surveyed were from academia, research institutions or think tanks, followed by government officials, members of civil society and the media.

A little more than 61 per cent of respondents said Asean should pick the US over China if the bloc was forced to pick a side in the rivalry between the world’s two largest economies. That compared with just over 53 per cent a year ago.

Just 38.5 per cent said they would pick China, compared to 46.4 per cent a year ago.

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This apparent preference came despite 44.2 per cent of respondents thinking China had provided the most help to the region in fighting the coronavirus, followed by Japan (18.2 per cent), the European Union (10.3 per cent) and the US (9.6 per cent).

In a panel discussion on the survey findings, Indonesian foreign policy observer Dewi Fortuna Anwar said Washington’s weak showing in this area was expected, given that it was “struggling with its own problems and is not in a position to give that kind of assistance”.

In contrast, China’s aid in donating personal protective equipment – and in vaccine cooperation – had been highly visible.

“So I would say that the survey, despite the fact that this is only 1,032 respondents who answered … it captured the mood and perceptions of what is actually happening in Southeast Asia,” said Anwar, a co-founder of the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia think tank.

More than six in 10 respondents said they would pick the US over China if forced to choose. File photo

‘ENORMOUS FEAR’

The survey’s findings about anxieties over China’s economic clout also featured in the webinar discussion.

Walter Lohman, director of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, said the “enormous fear” about China was out of proportion to the realities shown in investment data.

US investment in the region over the past decade, said Lohman, had on average been “about twice as big as China’s”.

On trade, while China had a larger share, the presence of the US, Japan and the EU was not insignificant, Lohman said.

“What it says to me again looking at the perspective of US policy is that the US needs a trade policy that better tells the story of the United States’ involvement in the region,” Lohman said.

And with the positive perception of Japan and the EU in the region, it would be good for Washington to be associated with these two players, he said.

As in previous iterations of the survey, the findings showed heightened alarm about China’s activities in the disputed South China Sea. Beijing claims almost the entirety of the waters, citing historical rights over an area demarcated by a nine-dash line.

03:23

The South China Sea dispute explained

Asean claimants say this boundary encroaches into their territorial waters and exclusive economic zones as enshrined under international law.

On the sea dispute, the top concern among respondents was “China’s militarisation and assertive actions” followed by “China’s encroachment on other littoral states’ maritime zones”, followed by the prospect of a US-China military confrontation in the area, the depletion of fish stock and biodiversity loss and increased US military presence.

Just over 80 per cent of respondents said the code of conduct being negotiated between Beijing and Asean over the dispute needed to be “aligned with international law”, with a little more than 53 per cent concluding it would not resolve the territorial dispute but would prevent and manage incidents at sea.

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Some 22 per cent of respondents were of the view that “the code of conduct will not change anything because China will never give up its territorial and jurisdictional claims based on the nine-dash line”.

Chen Ding Ding, a professor of international relations at Guangzhou’s Jinan University, said it was “positive news” that Asean respondents “overwhelmingly” wanted to conclude the code of conduct as Beijing too hoped for an early conclusion of such an accord.

The Chinese academic said there were unanswered questions over “inconsistencies” in the data, which he said showed overall trust levels for Beijing had increased at the same time as the rise in anxieties about its influence.

Lohman, the US-based scholar, said the “intensity” of concerns about China might not be deep. “Overall, when you look at all the things that Asean leaders, Asean citizens for that matter, are worried about on an everyday basis, the influence of China and even the South China Sea are not really top of their minds,” Lohman said. “And that is one way to reconcile the sort of schizophrenia in the numbers.”