China builds on goodwill in ASEAN in US absence

Beijing, July 29: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's absence from an Asian security forum in Manila this week could help China's new Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi build ties and trust in the region at Washington's expense.

US officials have said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the organisers of the forum, understands Rice's decision to give the ASEAN Regional Forum a miss for the second time in three years.

But some analysts say it sends a bad signal and could help Beijing build more clout in a region that is emerging from traditional wariness of China.

''The fact that Rice isn't coming has given China a symbolic victory,'' said Malcom Cook, programme director for Asia-Pacific affairs at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank.

Rice's decision comes after US President George W Bush opted to skip a forum in Singapore this coming September.

Around the region, Cook said, there were renewed concerns that the United States was paying too little attention ''and that's giving China much more latitude in the region, and indicating to the countries of Southeast Asia that China is much more interested in regional issues''.

China has worked hard since the early 1990s to transform its ties with Southeast Asia, deepening economic links and trying to dispel deep-seated misgivings about the intentions of the neighbourhood's dominant power.

Ong Keng Yong, Secretary-General of ASEAN, said the Chinese have been good players at ARF and nobody was uncomfortable with them at the table.

Chinese analysts and the government insist China does not approach such diplomacy as a zero-sum game.

''The cooperation between China and ASEAN is not exclusionary and it is not directed at anyone in particular or done at the expense of anyone else,'' said Jin Canrong, a professor of foreign relations at Beijing's Renmin University.

Transit

Southeast Asia is increasingly important to China as a trade partner and also as a transit area for most of the imported resources, including oil, that fuel China's growth.

Beijing says its foreign policy aims at creating peace and fostering stability -- interests the United States shares. Eric John, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (Southeast Asia), said Rice missing the meeting was ''something we can recover from'' because the United States and ASEAN shared basic interests in stability and democracy.

''As long as we have these same fundamental values in that area with ASEAN, it's something that the relationship can weather, although I will say it's a little rough right now,'' he said.

But some political analysts were uneasy about Rice's decision to skip ARF, which groups foreign ministers from the 10-member ASEAN and counterparts from 16 other countries and the EU.

The security group was founded in 1994 to promote cooperation in a region riven by suspicion due to lingering territorial and historical disputes.

''I think it sends a very bad signal regarding US engagement in the region,'' said Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation. ''(China's) influence is growing, largely without notice in Washington.'' China and ASEAN have been moving to set up a free-trade area since 2002, progressively lowering tariffs on a range of goods, and are discussing liberalising trade in services.

Security cooperation has deepened, too, and once acrimonious disputes over borders, particularly oil and gas-rich areas in the South China Sea, are now much less of a stumbling block.

''Up to now, these problems have remained under control. Both sides are cautious,'' Renmin University's Jin said.

Reuters>