Asean

We publish here an excerpt from a speech by Ng Eng Hen, Singapore's Minister of Defense, at the Shangri-La Dialogue 2023

Rising military spending, shifting military and trade alliances, and de facto nativist economic policies are strong winds of change. How do we weather the storms to come? For Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific region, the US-China relationship is central to stability. That is the core, but the penumbra of relationships of other countries outside this core is also important for stability. No country, I think, wants war, but our working assumptions and scenarios must be that unplanned incidents can occur. Channels of communication, both formal and informal, must exist so that when these unplanned incidents occur, those channels can be used to deescalate and avoid conflict. Despite the Cold War, the strategic arms limitation and anti-ballistic missile treaties were signed between Brezhnev and Nixon in 1972. The salient point is that such channels of communications must be built over time. It will be too late to start or activate them only in moments of crisis. Seasoned diplomats compare unfavourably the lines of communication between the US and Soviet Union in the Cold War with what exists today between the US and China, now at its ebb. It is not our place and certainly not my intention to comment on the diplomatic efforts of other countries, but I state these observations on declining touch points between the American and Chinese military establishments knowing full well that Singapore and other ASEAN states are not disinterested bystanders. Both the US and China have said that they do not want ASEAN countries to take sides, but ASEAN member states, with a vivid recollection of great power rivalry in our past and the devastating consequences, are acutely concerned that worsening relationships between these two powers, US and China, will inevitably force difficult choices upon our individual states. For ASEAN, both through bilateral ties and individual member states, and collectively with the US and China through the ADMM-Plus, we have sought inclusivity and engagement as key platforms for pre-emption and confidence building. Within the ADMM framework, we continue to pursue multilateral exercises that involve all our eight-plus partners. These interactions strengthen practical cooperation like the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) to reduce the risk of accidents and miscalculations. At the heart of our engagements, as fully exemplified in the Shangri-La Dialogue, is the desire to seek peace even as we security chiefs strengthen our militaries to protect our individual nations. At times, the progress seems painfully slow, but we owe it to our citizens and the next generation to persist and forge breakthroughs.

Read the full speech here

During the Asia-Pacific Security Summit in Singapore, the centrality of ASEAN, whose countries are calling for more dialogue at the international level, was reaffirmed

Editorial by Lorenzo Lamperti

"South-East Asia has paid more than others for the devastating consequences of the clash between great powers. We do not want this to happen again'. Ng Eng Hen, Singapore's Minister of Defence, made this clear in his speech during the last plenary session of the Shangri-La Dialogue, the Asia-Pacific's top security summit held in the city-state from 2 to 4 June. Singapore and the ASEAN region in general once again confirmed itself as a crucial crossroads of global diplomacy. At a complicated time, to say the least, between the war in Ukraine and tensions between the US and China, the South-East is making its voice heard, asking world leaders for wisdom. "Military spending is also increasing exponentially in the Asia-Pacific," says the Singaporean minister. "It is not a source of instability per se, but in the absence of proper dialogue between the powers then it risks leading to a rearmament race that can destabilise the entire region." During the meetings, which were also attended by the US Defence Secretary, Lloyd Austin, and the Chinese Defence Minister, Li Shangfu, the 'centrality of ASEAN' and the goodness of the ASEAN way was mentioned several times. And all the representatives of the South-East Asian countries emphasised their willingness to maintain relations with both Washington and Beijing, promoting multilateralism based on trade and international rules. But also and above all on dialogue. "Both Austin and Li assured that the US and China are not asking ASEAN countries to choose sides, but we also hope that these two countries can talk to each other again," said Ng Eng Hen. "Both have been in the Asia-Pacific for a long time and both will not leave. We have to find or rediscover a way to ensure stability and security for the region'. The same concept was also expressed by the IISS, the international institute that has been organising the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore for the past 20 years, where the intelligence chiefs of several countries, including the United States and China, also met behind closed doors. Proof, once again, of how Singapore and the South-East provide an exceptional platform for confrontation. If the future of the world will be written (also or especially) in this region, perhaps it would be worth listening to it.

Article by Vittoria Mazzieri

Regional investment targets, ideological allies, security partners, players in territorial claims: since the beginning of diplomatic relations, Southeast Asian countries have assumed changing and complex roles in Beijing's eyes. In terms of geographic proximity and economic cooperation, ASEAN occupies a priority role in Chinese foreign policy

Deng Xiaoping's 1979 trip to Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore marks an important point in relations between Beijing and the countries of Southeast Asia. The "little helmsman" was amazed by the socioeconomic progress in an area he had mistakenly regarded as economically backward. As noted in an essay on the subject by Singapore's Nanyang Technological University professors Zhou Taomo and Hong Liu, what particularly struck Deng was the city-state south of Malaysia. In the aftermath of his meeting with then Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the People's Daily moves from describing Singapore as the "watchdog of American imperialists" to painting it as an "island of peace," a "garden city worth studying." Deng, on the other hand, receives yet another confirmation of the need to abandon the ideological lenses with which the Communist Party has hitherto interpreted relations with Southeast Asia.

Relations between the Asian giant and the city-state demonstrate the People's Republic's changing relations with the area traditionally known as Nanyang 南洋, "South Seas." In addition to the domestic political context, Beijing's relations with the region have been influenced by issues related to the identity of diasporic communities (in Singapore, 75 percent of the population is ethnic Chinese), territorial disputes, and various infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative.

The first years after the People's Republic's emergence are characterized by a moderate and flexible approach: Beijing advocates a "third way" that can offer an alternative to the two Cold War blocs even to countries ideologically unrelated to the Communist Party. The promulgation of the Five Principles for Peaceful Coexistence in 1954 presents a new framework of international relations based on mutual respect for territorial integrity and the principle of non-interference, even for ideologically unrelated countries. The Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty, signed the following year, ends the policy of granting nationality to all ethnic Chinese. China thus encourages overseas communities to adopt the nationality of the countries in which they live, thereby aiming to assuage the concerns of some Southeast Asian countries, fearful that communities of Chinese could be used by the Party to engage in subversive activities. 

Over the years ethnic Chinese minorities became the target of heavy-handed discriminatory policies: in 1959 Indonesian President Sukarno revoked the license to operate retail businesses from all "foreigners," mostly Chinese. As a result, in some places, the feeling of belonging to the motherland is strengthened. With the onset of the Cultural Revolution, groups of ethnic Chinese students began wearing Mao Zedong badges in schools in Rangoon, in present-day Myanmar. A wave of large-scale ethnic riots and a drastic deterioration in bilateral relations ensue.

Since the late 1960s, Chinese foreign policy in general has tended to radicalize, partly because of the economic recession following the disastrous Great Leap Forward. The establishment in 1967 of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), founded by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand from an anti-communist perspective, is perceived by Mao Zedong as a tool of imperialism. Ideologically neighboring countries are asked to recognize as the main targets of the revolution, in Premier Zhou Enlai's words, "imperialism, feudalism and comprador capitalism." An approach that would change dramatically in the aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. As explained in an article for ISPI by Ngeow Chow-Bing, director of the Institute of Chinese Studies at the University of Malaya, in this scenario ASEAN assumes strategic importance for Beijing to contain the expansionist aims of the government in Hanoi (with which relations have deteriorated irretrievably) over Indochina and the entire region.

The record-breaking economic development affecting the People's Republic since the 1990s is a key element in the expansion of its soft power influence, as Joshua Kurlantzick, fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, has written. China's economic performance attracts the interest of developing countries and also has the effect of enhancing the reputation of Chinese communities living in the region.

It is during those years that what official Chinese rhetoric describes as the "golden decade" of relations with ASEAN (which as of today, in addition to the founding countries, also counts Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, East Timor, Laos, and Vietnam) begins. During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Beijing made the symbolic decision not to devalue its currency, offering itself as a guarantor of stability. In the following years it initiated relevant multilateral agreements: the Chiang Mai Currency Exchange Initiative, the 2002 Free Trade Agreement, and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, which stabilized territorial disputes, in the same year. 

But with Xi Jinping's rise to power, Chinese foreign policy acquired a more proactive and assertive profile. The deterioration of relations over the past decade, especially with the Philippines and Vietnam, is inextricably linked to territorial claims in the South China Sea area. Since the 1970s, disputes with Vietnam over the Spratly and Paracelsus Islands have turned into a regional, or even global, dispute. Of little or no use was the 2002 Code of Conduct, which while celebrated at the time as a means of ensuring a "peaceful, friendly and harmonious environment in the South China Sea," did not include provisions on enforcement or dispute resolution mechanisms. 

Tensions, therefore, grew, even reaching Indonesia for the first time in 2016. In the same year, a ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague rejected Beijing's claims, represented by the so-called "nine-point line." Beijing did not accept the decision recognizing Manila's rights to exploit resources within the 200 nautical miles of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Rather, it accused Washington of pushing the Philippines to resort to the court to "sabotage relations between China and ASEAN countries."

Despite its maritime claims, China has never stopped courting countries in the region. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the historic agreement sealed in 2020 after eight years of negotiations and entered into force in January 2022, has served Beijing to consolidate economic cooperation in the area. But mutual trade relations cannot be explained without bringing up the Belt and Road Initiative, the ambitious new Silk Road launched in 2013 that counts Chinese investments worth about 85 billion a year. As early as the early 2000s, Southeast Asia emerged as an important regional target for Chinese foreign direct investment. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic crisis, ASEAN rose to the top spot among BRI investment destinations. 

The initiative has met with varying degrees of acceptance in countries in the region. Despite tensions over territorial disputes, many nations involved have continued to desire Chinese investment in infrastructure and manufacturing. Unlike its more welcoming neighbors, Hanoi has taken a cautious approach: the Vietnamese strategy seems to aim to avoid confrontation with China while averting the risk of economic dependence. To date, the only BRI project implemented in the country is the Cat Linh-Ha Dong tramway, which has attracted widespread criticism because of its high cost.

The derailment of a high-speed train of the ambitious Jakarta-Bandung rail project shows that safety risks can undermine the People's Republic's credibility. A recent report by Malaysian lending institution Maybank suggests that the post-pandemic recovery may be less strong than expected. Projects could suffer setbacks because of growing government distrust of, for example, social and environmental costs: in 2014, Chinese-owned bauxite mining operations in Vietnam's central highlands sparked widespread protests over environmental damage and noncompliance with local laws. For other countries that have been more actively engaged in the BRI, such as Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, fears about the "debt trap" periodically return from economists and observers. 

Overall, Southeast Asian countries remain essential to Beijing for numerous reasons. For example, as partners toward whom China can accelerate the spread of "soft" infrastructure such as health services and the digital economy. Or as useful players in subverting international balances and increasing the relevance of the Asia-Pacific. Against the backdrop of tensions with the United States, the People's Republic aims to present itself to ASEAN countries as a non-assertive actor, willing to pursue "mutual respect," "dialogue," and "win-win" synergies, as claimed last year at the launch of the Global Security Initiative (GSI). On the other hand, China's investments are shaping up as unmissable resources for developing countries in the region: the GSI's sister initiative, the Global Development Initiative (GDI), represents Beijing's willingness to name itself a central role in multilateral development promotion. ASEAN has become the largest regional group to benefit from it, nabbing 14 projects out of a total of 50 from the first batch of the GDI Project Pool.

 

The region has rapid growth and expanding economy suggest that the region can become a model for managing competition between major powers

"South-East Asia is far from a monolith: its countries have different foreign policies and objectives, some of them at odds with each other. But the region's rapid growth and expanding economy suggest that its countries will become more powerful over time and, with them, probably more able to avoid external interference. South-East Asia may have been defined in the past by conflict between great powers, but today it may become a model for managing competition between great powers'. Thus judges an analysis by Huong Le Thu, published in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. South-East Asia has worked hard to maintain and expand diplomatic and security stability. In addition to the ASEAN-led multilateral security architecture, the region has established many plurilateral and bilateral agreements with third states. These are ad hoc groups, such as the joint patrolling of the Mekong River by China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. According to Foreign Affairs, as geopolitical tensions rise, the already large number of these partnerships is set to increase. These complex and often overlapping agreements are central to Southeast Asia's efforts to engage with all, but without making exclusive commitments to any. Southeast Asian states are also becoming more active in groups that include participants from outside their neighbourhood. Last year, for example, Cambodia hosted the high-profile East Asia Summit, Thailand held the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and Indonesia chaired the G20. Individually, Huong points out, some South East Asian governments have learnt that competition between the US and China has advantages. The clash between Beijing and Washington may scare politicians in the region, but it has led both governments to try to win the hearts and minds of non-aligned countries. This has helped South East Asian countries, home to young populations and cheap labour, reap all kinds of economic benefits. Vietnam, says Foreign Affairs, has benefited enormously from the US breakaway from China, as American companies have moved production to Vietnamese factories. Indonesia has also received an investment boost from US companies, including Amazon, Microsoft and Tesla. The region is also becoming increasingly critical for global supply chains. And it may point the way forward for continued prosperity.

Increasing cooperation between Southeast Asian countries and global platforms such as the G7. And beyond. With the hope that more and more governments will follow the bloc's "third way"

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is increasingly involved in global decision-making mechanisms. A very timely example is the historic first meeting between G7 justice ministers and those of the regional bloc. A joint meeting is scheduled for July, with Japan, the host country and G7 chair. A similar Japan-ASEAN meeting is scheduled for the same days. On the other hand, since the start of the war in Ukraine, it has sharpened the distance between the West and some countries. ASEAN, with its third way of neutrality and pacifism, can serve as a crucial connector in this global phase. Southeast Asians fear that the use of force to change the status quo, as Russia did in Ukraine, will spread to the Asia-Pacific. Most of all, they fear getting involved in disputes where they do not belong. "ASEAN must remain independent and a zone of neutrality amid the escalating rivalry between the U.S. and China," Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said in recent days, stressing that ASEAN was formed to promote peace and stability in the region. "This position continues. We do not want the region to be the basis for military competition. This position has been quite consistent, although we remain friendly with all countries," he explained. Recent multilateral agreements that threaten to set the stage for an arms race are frowned upon. In 1995, 10 ASEAN member states signed the Southeast Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, or Bangkok Treaty, which designates the region as nuclear weapons-free. The treaty also includes a protocol open for signature by China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. So far no one has signed it, but we are finally seeing the first movements. Recently, China expressed its intention to sign the protocol for the ASEAN Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty. But it will not be easy to get everyone to join. The bloc's hope is that by participating more and more frequently in global platforms, the world will increasingly choose to follow that third way it has been indicating for several years now.