U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the ASEAN Regional Forum, Vientiane, Laos, July 2024
Chalinee Thirasupa / Reuters The United States has recently been touting its “convergence” with Asian partners. At the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin titled his remarks the “New Convergence in the Indo-Pacific.”At the Brookings Institution the following month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken maintained that the United States enjoys “much greater convergence” with key Asian partners, citing improved ties with Japan and South Korea and the strengthening security links between NATO and the Indo-Pacific. And, also in July, at the Aspen Security Forum, Blinken reiterated that he had “not seen a time when there’s been greater convergence between the United States and our European partners and our partners in Asia in terms of the approach to Russia, but also in terms of the approach to China.”
But the truth is that United States is losing ground in important parts of Asia. Each year, the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute—a research institute funded primarily by the Singaporean government but that conducts its work independently—polls between 1,000 and 2,000 respondents in academia, think tanks, the private sector, civil society, nonprofit organizations, the media, government, and regional and international organizations from the ten countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The survey is the closest thing the region has to a longitudinal study of “elite opinion” on regional and international matters, providing a good sense of the trajectory of perceptions, even if some might quibble with its finer details. In the poll this year, the majority of respondents picked China over the United States when asked whom ASEAN should align with if forced to choose between the two. This was the first time respondents picked China since the survey began posing this question in 2020.
This drop in support for the United States should sound alarm bells in Washington, which sees China as its main competitor and the Indo-Pacific as a critical battleground. Southeast Asia lies at the geographic heart of this vast and dynamic region. It is home to two U.S. allies (the Philippines and Thailand) and several important partners. United States’ goals in the Indo-Pacific are hampered by the loss of ground to China. The Philippines and Singapore, where the United States has military facilities, would be particularly important in the event of outright conflict between China and the United States, but short of war, China’s growing sway in Southeast Asia still dampens America’s ability to engage bilaterally and multilaterally to strategic effect. Many Southeast Asian countries are not liberal democracies, and governments there do not necessarily implement foreign policies that reflect public opinion. But the group polled included government officials, and even illiberal democracies now feel pressure to respond to citizens’ views.
LOSING FACE
In recent years, the United States has had some successes in Southeast Asia. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has strengthened ties with the Philippines in particular, securing access to four new military facilities in 2023. In response to sustained high-level diplomatic engagement culminating in Biden’s visit to Hanoi in September last year, Vietnam also formally upgraded its relationship with the United States by two levels to a “comprehensive strategic partnership”—although the extent to which this will translate into increased cooperation in defense and security and deepened economic ties remains to be seen.
With most other countries in Southeast Asia, however, the United States has fared more poorly. In its 2020 survey—the first year that the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute asked respondents “If ASEAN were forced to align itself with one of the strategic rivals, which should it choose?”—50.2 percent chose the United States, compared with 49.8 percent who chose China, when responses are adjusted (as they have been since the 2022 poll) to ensure that the responses of each country are represented by equal proportion. In 2023, 61 percent of respondents chose the United States compared with 39 percent who chose China, although the United States fared below the overall average in Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand. In the 2024 survey, however, China edged past the United States as the region’s choice of alignment partner: 50.5 percent of respondents chose China, and 49.5 percent chose the United States.
Breaking down this year’s result by country shows that since the 2023 poll, the United States has lost the most ground to China among respondents in Laos (a 30 percentage point decline), Malaysia (a 20 percentage point decline), Indonesia (a 20 percentage point decline), Cambodia (an 18 percentage point decline), and Brunei (a 15 percentage point decline). The United States has also lost ground in Myanmar and Thailand (10 and 9 percentage point declines, respectively).
Many Southeast Asians now say that they would choose China over the United States if forced to align with just one.
The United States still commands very high support in the Philippines (where 83 percent of respondents selected it over China) and Vietnam (where 79 percent did) and solid backing in Singapore (62 percent), Myanmar (58 percent), and Cambodia (55 percent). But only in three countries did respondents’ preference for aligning with the United States over China grow from 2023 to 2024—the Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam—and these increases were small. Given the question’s framing, the United States’ loss is always China’s gain. In other words, respondents—including government officials—in many countries in Southeast Asia, including one of two U.S. allies (Thailand) and two of four partners with which the United States’ Indo-Pacific Strategy seeks stronger relations (Indonesia and Malaysia), now report that they would choose China over the United States if forced to align with just one of the strategic rivals.
The United States has lost support most dramatically in countries with Muslim majorities. The 2024 survey revealed an especially sharp hardening of sentiment from 2023. Seventy-five percent of Malaysian, 73 percent of Indonesian, and 70 percent of Bruneian respondents surveyed said they would prefer alignment with China over the United States, compared with 55 percent, 54 percent, and 55 percent in 2023, respectively. The survey did not ask respondents why they made this selection. But it is telling that when a different question asked respondents to select their top three geopolitical concerns, nearly half ranked the Israel-Hamas conflict at the very top, surpassing the 40 percent that ranked the more geographically proximate South China Sea dispute most highly.
The United States’ strong support for Israel likely tipped the scales in favor of China. Those surveyed in all three Muslim-majority countries ranked the Israel-Hamas conflict as their top geopolitical concern: 83 percent of Malaysian, 79 percent of Bruneian, and 75 percent of Indonesian respondents selected this option. Singapore, which has a significant Malay-Muslim minority (15 percent of its population), also ranked the Israel-Hamas conflict as its top concern, with 58 percent of respondents selecting this option.
CULPABLE NEGLIGENCE
The survey’s findings are consistent with my recent conversations in the region. Indonesian diplomats with whom I spoke were scathing about the United States’ position on the war in Gaza. A top Malaysian diplomat declared simply that “we will choose China because of Gaza.” In a separate conversation, a high-level Malaysian official explained that although Malaysia has long followed a nonaligned foreign policy and has been critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, the intensity of anger toward Israel and the United States has grown; many Malaysians are now boycotting American food and consumer brands. China, by contrast, is seen in an increasingly favorable light.
The fact that Cambodian respondents indicated a preference for aligning with the United States, even though that preference weakened by 18 percentage points from 2023, might appear surprising, given that the Cambodian government is staunchly pro-China. Indeed, ordinary Cambodians I spoke to on a visit in March said they valued the United States’ support of democracy. Yet even those who spoke highly of America could not point to specific contributions the country had made to Cambodia apart from its support of civil society groups.
This past June, U.S. Secretary of Defense Austin visited Phnom Penh to explore opportunities to strengthen defense ties. But this attempt to bolster relations with Cambodia fell well behind Beijing’s engagements with the country. In 2019, Cambodia reportedly struck a deal granting the Chinese military exclusive access to Ream Naval Base on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand, providing China with strategic and logistical advantages—although both Phnom Penh and Beijing have denied that China will use the base for military purposes. China also plays an outsized role in Cambodia’s economy. According to the Council for the Development of Cambodia, a Cambodian government agency responsible for promoting and facilitating investment, Chinese investment in May accounted for almost 50 percent of Cambodia’s total financing; the United States accounted for less than one percent. In August, Cambodia broke ground on a $1.7 billion, China-funded canal to link Phnom Penh to the Gulf of Thailand.
Chinese investments are generally welcomed in Southeast Asia.
Similarly, although Washington may tout the United States’ upgraded ties with Vietnam, China has enjoyed the same level of partnership since 2008. Three months after the U.S. upgrade, Hanoi moved to further elevate Vietnam’s strategic relations with China. The two capitals announced 36 new cooperation deals, and Hanoi issued a joint statement on diplomatic ties that adhered to China’s desired formulation: namely, that China and Vietnam constitute a “community of common destiny,” a wording that Hanoi had eschewed for years given concerns about its vagueness and that it would be viewed as a move to take China’s side.
Western media outlets often carry reports about the debt traps associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. But BRI projects are generally welcomed in Southeast Asia for the growth and development potential they offer the recipient country. One high-ranking diplomat from the region pronounced it a model for how to win “hearts and minds.” In January, I traveled to Laos, where the ASEAN foreign ministers’ retreat was taking place in Luang Prabang, the country’s cultural and spiritual center. There were no signs of competition for influence between China and the United States; Chinese influence alone pervaded people’s daily lives. Residents of Luang Prabang spoke positively of the boost to local businesses since April 2023, when a BRI-affiliated railway running through the city and connecting Laos to China opened fully.
A Laotian hotel manager who had previously assisted passengers as an employee of the majority-Chinese-owned Laos-China Railway Company, recounted how some travelers removed their shoes and left them on the platform before boarding. For many Laotian villagers, this was their first time taking a train. But this endearing anecdote also drove home a deeper point: in Asia, one customarily takes off one’s shoes before entering a home, and Laotians clearly felt comfortable with the Chinese-built railway.
HIDDEN COST
China’s growing sway in Southeast Asia hampers the United States’ ability to engage bilaterally and multilaterally in the region to strategic effect. The most obvious example is ASEAN’s cautious approach on the South China Sea: despite Beijing’s increasingly aggressive actions in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the past year, the bloc has issued no statement calling China out by name.
But the loss of ground the United States has experienced in the region also hurts its position elsewhere, whether in garnering support for condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or for its policies in the Middle East. Perceptions of national interest determine a country’s position on any issue. But being in Southeast Asian countries’ good standing would help Washington persuade them why a position might be in their interests. Washington’s appeals for a stronger global response to Russia’s flagrant violations of international law—which undermine the interests of all countries—mostly fell on deaf ears in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, many in Southeast Asia repeat Russian or Chinese talking points on the war. Perceptions that the United States has double standards in its foreign policy—and self-interested goals when it comes to China—have undermined its ability to garner greater support. When many Southeast Asians look at the United States now, they see a country that is dysfunctional at home and pushing a nakedly self-interested agenda abroad.
To regain support in Southeast Asia, the United States should avoid overstating its convergence with Asian partners. Stressing the convergence narrative suggests, at best, that Washington lacks an awareness of the United States’ declining position in Southeast Asia and, at worst, that Southeast Asia is being overlooked in U.S. foreign policy. Washington should also recognize that although Southeast Asian governments, particularly those grappling with competing territorial and maritime claims with China, might take umbrage at Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea, this dispute does not constitute the sum total of their relations with China. This holds true even for the Philippines: Beijing still has room to modulate Manila’s response by behaving better in the South China Sea, meeting its obligations under BRI agreements, or offering up other investments.
Washington must step up its economic engagements with the region: for Southeast Asian countries, economics is security. When the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute survey asked respondents who was the “most influential economic power” in Southeast Asia, almost 60 percent of respondents selected China, while the United States trailed at 14 percent. Enhanced economic outreach, including greater trade and investment, should follow the U.S. defense secretary’s recent visit to Cambodia. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who last year took over from his father, Hun Sen, is a West Point graduate and fluent English speaker. Washington has an opportunity to turn the page on a decade of strained relations and take advantage of these links to strategically engage Phnom Penh to counter China’s fast-growing influence in Cambodia.
To regain support, United States must avoid overstating its convergence with Asian partners.
The United States must also focus squarely on responding to Chinese actions that clearly undermine U.S. national security interests or that constitute egregious breaches of international law. In either case, Washington should be able to clearly justify its responses and tailor them to be commensurate with China’s breach. Many in Southeast Asia find it hard to fathom why a 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles imported from China, for instance, is necessary on national security grounds. Southeast Asian capitals worry about Washington being unnecessarily confrontational and triggering a U.S.-China clash or dealing further blows to the current economic order, which has brought them benefits.
The United States wants to counter Chinese disinformation. But efforts to do so must address the root causes of why they resonate. China has depicted America as a “craven warmonger” in Gaza; many Southeast Asians with whom I recently spoke, including non-Muslims, said that this characterization rang true to them. Such a depiction would hold little water, however, if not for Washington’s own response to the crisis in Gaza, which has supported or at least acquiesced in Israel’s worst excesses.
Regaining the ground that the United States has lost in Southeast Asia will be an uphill battle. Southeast Asian countries will continue to hedge between the United States and China, but the challenge for Washington will be to convert their continued desire to engage the United States into strategic gains. Given the stakes, however, Washington must try. The United States’ problem in Asia, moreover, is not its alone. Southeast Asia would be foolish to allow its ties to the United States to fray. The security umbrella the United States provides has brought the region peace and prosperity. Without a strong U.S. presence, the region’s strategic options will shrink and so, too, will its ability to demand better behavior from China.
Many of the difficulties the United States faces in Southeast Asia are not unique. They are part of a larger quandary for the country: namely, how to win over the global South—particularly developing countries that China is courting aggressively—or at least prevent it from sliding into China’s orbit. But Southeast Asia is especially important to U.S. strategy because it lies at the heart of a region that Washington has identified as a priority. It is in the Indo-Pacific, after all, that the battle with China will be won or lost.