Image - xinhuanet.com
BEIJING — Malaysia’s prime minister
arrived in China on Monday with warm words for his hosts, a thirst for Chinese
money and, for the first time, a promise of significantly closer defense ties
with the purchase of Chinese naval coastal patrol ships.
Najib Razak called
himself a “true friend” of China, determined to take their relationship
to “new heights” — echoing the pro-China outreach by
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte two weeks ago when he proclaimed a
“separation” from his country’s longtime U.S.-oriented policies.
The twin nods toward China reinforce the
regional narrative of American decline and China’s inexorable rise. They also
showcase Beijing’s apparent ability to buy off rivals for disputed territory in
the South China Sea, which China claims as its own despite strong objections
from the Pentagon and U.S. allies in the region.
“Malaysia being a South China Sea claimant,
and hot on the heels of Duterte, there is an obvious symbolism there,” said
Euan Graham, director of the international security program at the Lowy
Institute for International Policy in Sydney. “In the maritime geopolitical
aspect, it’s almost back to dominoes. The Philippines has caved, and Malaysia
looks wobbly.”
Malaysia is China’s
closest trading partner in Southeast Asia. The naval dealwill add a significant security element to that
relationship, experts said.
Part of the reason is
domestic politics. Najib was once so close to President Obama that they spent a
day playing golf
together in Hawaii in 2014. But ties to the United States were
strained in July after the Justice Department opened an investigation
into alleged money laundering at a state investment fund linked
to the Malaysian leader. That scandal has made Najib unwelcome in Western
capitals and depressed Western investment in his country.
Najib will be discussing a high-speed rail
project as well as real estate and energy deals with China, but it is his
promise to sign “the first significant defense deal” between the two
nations that comes as something of a surprise.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” said James Chin,
director of the Asia Institute at the University of Tasmania, noting that Najib
faces elections next year. “It looks very good for domestic purposes if a
world power like China is willing to see him and give him five-star treatment,
a red-carpet welcome.”
But there are also geopolitical calculations
and recalibrations underway around the region, some experts say.
Obama’s strategic rebalance, or “pivot,” to
Asia has proved a disappointment in many capitals, with the ambitious 12-nation
Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement in deep trouble. China, by
contrast, can offer piles of cash and promises of investment without tortuous
negotiations or exacting conditions.
The U.S. military has been unable to prevent
China’s island reclamation program in the South China Sea, while Duterte’s
pledge to throw out U.S. troops has been another blow — even if many experts
predict a less dramatic shift in Philippine foreign policy than its erratic
president might threaten.
“The pivot hasn’t had the impact it ought to
have had,” said Michael Montesano, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak
Institute in Singapore. “It has failed to reduce the doubts that were already
there about U.S. staying power and commitment to the region.”
Yet the narrative of U.S. “decline” and Asia’s
tilt toward China is only one side of the coin, Montesano and others argue.
China may have power, money and influence, but
its aggressive assertion of its South China Sea claims has alienated other nations
and pushed them toward Washington, said Yang Razali Kassim, a senior fellow at
the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological
University in Singapore.
An international tribunal ruled in July that
Beijing’s expansive claims to the South China Sea lacked historical basis. “If
China pushes its weight to press the claims that it has lost,” he said,
“Beijing will only carve for itself the image of a menacing emerging giant.”
In fact, few Asian nations want to be in
Beijing’s pocket any more than they want to be in Washington’s and would prefer
strategic balance between the two powers.
Even for Malaysia, it is too early to say if
the latest step is a solid move into China’s camp, said Yin Shao Loong,
executive director of Malaysia’s Institut Rakyat.
Malaysia’s military held joint training with
Chinese armed forces in 2015, but it has deeper and longer-standing links with
the United States and other Western nations.
It has also allowed the U.S. Navy to fly P-8A
Poseidon long-range surveillance aircraft from its territory in recent years,
to Beijing’s discomfort.
Strategic balance is even more of a priority
in Vietnam, which has moved significantly closer to Washington in recent years
while being careful not to antagonize Beijing.
In September, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen
Xuan Phuc visited Beijing in a bid to boost trade and attract investment.
“Up to that point we were very hesitant,” said
a Vietnamese official who was not authorized to be named, explaining that his nation
did not want to become economically overdependent on China or a dumping ground
for inferior products and polluting heavy industries. “But we are recalibrating,
accepting more of the Chinese economy in Vietnam’s economy — the Chinese are
the ones who have money to spend.”
But Vietnam, with domestic public opinion
strongly nationalistic, is equally determined not to give way in its dispute
with China in the South China Sea.
It is a similarly mixed picture elsewhere.
Thailand’s
military-led government is buying three submarines from China, but Indonesia —
furious about incursions by Chinese fishing boats into its waters this year —
is now considering joint patrols with Australia in the South China Sea,
officials said this week, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Original
post: washingtonpost.com
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