East Asia: A New Balancing Game?

East Asia: A New Balancing Game?


Amitav Acharya


If media reports and reviews by pundits are to be believed, a new balancing game is in full swing in Asia. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh completed a week-long visit around the region, covering Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam, attending the East Asia Summit (EAS) in Hanoi on October 30th. Ostensibly highlighting India’s “Look East” Policy, Singh’s trip was nonetheless read by many as a sign of Delhi’s balancing policy towards China. Beginning 27th October, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton embarked on a seven-country, two-week “circle the Pacific” tour, covering Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia, with a brief stopover in China’s Hainan island. The occasion of her visit was also the EAS, to which the US (along with Russia) had been invited for the first time. And on 7 November, President Obama himself joined in, with a visit to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan.

For the Chinese media, these may as well be called the “encirclement” policy. An editorial in People’s Daily, asked,: “Does India’s ‘Look East’ Policy Mean ‘Look to Encircle China’?” And writing in the Newsweek Magazine on November 9th, Denis Macshane, a former British Foreign Office official, found “Washington playing balance-of-power politics” in Asia.

Indeed, the very decision to invite the US, Russia, Australian and India to what had originally been conceived as an East Asian only (i.e. East Asia without Caucasians or Indians) Summit was made by the ASEAN countries in order to avoid a Chinese dominance of the EAS.

To be sure, the participation of the US in the EAS was already foreordained since it acceded to ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in 2009. India’s “Look East” policy is at least a decade old and would have been inconceivable without its growing economic dynamism. The timing of Obama’s Asia visit had more to do with his domestic travails than his foreign policy challenges. While preventing Chinese dominance over regional bodies is a clear goal of China’s neighbours, it does not justify viewing the expanded membership of the EAS primarily as a balancing game.

But what gives the recent visits by Indian and US officials a special significance is the growing misgiving in the region about China’s recent behaviour, including its declaration of the South China Sea as a “core interest”, its harsh criticism of Japan over its arrest of a Chinese fisherman near the disputed Senkau/Daiyutai islands, and its summary dismissal of any US role in these regional disputes. To many in Washington at least, China’s “charm offensive” and “soft power” diplomacy has now given way to “Chinese assertiveness”, or even big power bullying.

This may be overstating the case. Chinese started participating in multilateral institutions in Asia in the 1990s to counter the talk around the region of a “China threat”. The truth (now as it was then) is that China cannot exclude the US from regional bodies, or having a say over regional matters, since no country in the region, Japan, South Korea, and ASEAN members included, would accept it. Such a strategy is sure to backfire by drawing its neighbours, including ASEAN, tighter around the US. China can try to divide and rule ASEAN, by prevailing upon some members to accept its line on regional issues. But even Burma and Cambodia (one of the countries visited by Clinton), despite the large sums they receive from China, are unlikely to place all their eggs in the Chinese basket.

So if China thought it can get away by talking (if not acting) tough and trying to keep America out of regional matters, it has badly miscalculated. The diplomatic gains China might have made over the past decade through its “charm offensive” now risk quickly dissipating, unless Beijing shows more maturity and restraint. Moreover, China will do well to realize that interdependence means its actions in one part of Asia will reverberate in other parts. So how it deals with Japan over the East China Sea islands would matter to ASEAN. Similarly, acting tough with ASEAN over the South China Sea islands will matter to all countries.

But a big mystery in all this is this: who is calling the shots in China's policy towards its neighbours? Outsiders generally think of China as a communist monolith. But China is increasingly complex, as most countries undergoing rapid economic change tend to be. One explanation for Beijing’s recent assertiveness is that China’s sudden global prominence in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis has gone into its head or at least caused policy confusion about how to “lead”. Another is that there is a growing rift between the military and the civilian leadership over issues of critical foreign policy issues. Few years ago, a senior PLA official had told this author that it was not happy about Beijing’s apparent “concession” by agreeing with ASEAN on a Declaration on the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea. The Foreign Ministry, which is most supportive of regional cooperation, now seems to have been sidelined. And if the PLA is unhappy, the communist party has to show understanding at a time of transition to a new leadership.

(The author is Professor of international relations at American University, Washington, D.C. and Chair of its ASEAN Studies Center. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada).
This article appeared in Canada-Asia Viewpoints, Nov 12, 2010
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