EPaper

Pelosi’s swing through Asia was aimed at conveying the US’s “strong and unshakeable” support for the region.

• Speaker’s trip to Taipei undermines months of US efforts to build robust presence that is palatable to its allies

Sarah Zheng and Philip J Heijmans

US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s swing through Asia was aimed at conveying the US’s “strong and unshakeable” support for the region. It ended up leaving many countries in stunned silence as China conducted unprecedented military drills around Taiwan.

The shock waves from the highest-level US visit to Taiwan in a quarter of a century are still reverberating days after she flew back to Washington.

China’s military has extended exercises designed to show an ability to encircle the island and cut off the Taiwan Strait, one of the world’s busiest trade routes, days after launching missiles that were likely to have flown over Taipei and into waters that Japan claims as an exclusive economic zone.

On its own, such a display would normally generate widespread condemnation of China. But many governments also saw Pelosi’s visit as a step too far and they don’t want to get caught in the middle.

While longtime allies Japan and Australia joined the US in criticising China’s response, other security partners in the region stayed quiet. South Korea’s leader snubbed Pelosi after the visit, India has not said a word and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) rushed to reaffirm that they recognise only one China — a basic framework that Beijing requires for diplomatic relations, though interpretations vary across nations.

“Most Southeast Asian countries will view the US as having provoked China’s entirely predictable overreaction,” said Shahriman Lockman, a director at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Malaysia.

“The lesson for Asean members here is that you will have to continuously hedge your bets. There is no telling whose actions might precipitate the next crisis in US-China relations.”

Since taking office, US President Joe Biden has sought to build a broad coalition in Asia to push back against Chinese overreach, in part by telling smaller economies they do not need to pick sides. That marked a stark contrast with the Donald Trump administration, which pressured countries in the region to ban Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies and take other steps that would effectively force them to choose between the world’s two biggest economies.

The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, unveiled by Biden during a visit to South Korea in May, was emblematic of the approach. While the launch of the framework excluded China, the US managed to sign up seven Southeast Asian countries as well as Fiji by insisting it was open to Beijing and leaving out Taiwan, even as the Biden administration began parallel trade discussions with the island’s government.

Those talks, while short of a fully fledged trade agreement sought by many in the region, signalled a more robust US leadership presence in Asia to counter China in a way that is palatable to nations that need strong trade ties with Beijing to boost their economies.

They also complemented other US initiatives to counter China, including introducing an alternative to President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road investments, as well as a push for stronger ties on trade, public health and cybersecurity.

Yet all of a sudden, after months of trying to make it comfortable for countries to align with the US, Pelosi’s visit forced Asia to take a stand on China’s most sensitive issue of all. And many governments just put their heads down.

Asean put out a statement urging “maximum restraint” and reaffirming its support for a “One China policy”, with Cambodian foreign minister Prak Sokhonn — whose country is chairing the group — indicating that Pelosi was to blame for triggering the tensions. In a statement backing Beijing, Malaysia’s special envoy to China condemned Pelosi for “fanning the fires of antagonism”, though the country’s foreign minister later said it was not official government policy.

At the weekend, Singapore foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan warned rising tension between the US and China presented a “dangerous, dangerous moment for the world”, adding: “I know you have to compete, maybe even confront, but we all have skin in this game.”

Asean’s statement “is quite telling actually of the alarm in Southeast Asia about their own economic wellbeing being disrupted by a flashpoint developing in the Taiwan Strait”, said Alexander Neill, a Singaporebased adviser on geopolitical risk who has worked for the US and UK governments.

He said the number of countries referencing their one China policies was “a sort of litmus test for Beijing’s burgeoning influence across the region”.

While the White House has not openly endorsed Pelosi’s trip, it has defended her right to visit Taiwan as consistent with years of US policy. The Biden administration has repeatedly said the US Congress was an independent branch of the government and the president had no power to tell her to call off the trip. Pelosi herself said the visit was meant to show US support for the island democracy, insisting that China “cannot prevent world leaders or anyone from travelling to Taiwan”.

In a sign of how the US and China sought to shape the narrative over the visit, both sides cited Asean’s statement as affirmation of their position.

Asked about the region’s response, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said “the total disproportion” between Pelosi’s visit and China’s drills was “very clear to countries throughout the region”.

Several days later, China’s foreign ministry counted Asean among what it said were 170 countries that had “voiced staunch support for China on the Taiwan question through various means. They form an overwhelming majority versus the US and its few followers.”

Some of the most telling reactions came from US partners in the region.

In South Asia, as countries including Bangladesh and Sri Lanka affirmed their support for the One China policy, India kept mum on the issue.

Though India is a member of the Quad grouping with the US, Japan and Australia, its official silence shows the limits of its readiness to veer into the US orbit as it looks to manage its relationship with China.

“Not having a response is also kind of a response,” said Sana Hashmi, postdoctoral fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation. “There is a feeling that India is shying away from taking a stand.”

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol ended up in the most difficult position, avoiding Pelosi altogether after she flew from Taiwan to Seoul ostensibly due to a previously scheduled holiday. South Korea’s foreign minister is paying an official visit to China this week, shortly after Beijing scrapped a meeting with Japan’s top diplomat after the nation joined the Group of Seven in expressing concern about the military drills around Taiwan.

While Pelosi’s visit helped show the US commitment to the region, it also put South Korea in an awkward position and highlighted general confusion over US policy towards China, according to Seong-hyon Lee, a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. He cited recent US moves such as declaring “genocide” against mostly Muslim Uighurs in the far west region of Xinjiang, even as the US still wants to do business with China. “What the US lacks is coherence and clarity in its China policy,” Lee said. “It makes allies scratch their heads.”

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2022-08-10T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-10T07:00:00.0000000Z

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