China fills void left by U.S. in S.E. Asia

By Joel Brinkley

Even before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began her trip to Asia, she acknowledged that “perhaps we didn’t pay an appropriate amount of attention” to the region in recent years.

In fact, the Bush administration insulted Southeast Asia by failing to attend regional meetings that the United States had never missed before. And as Clinton toured the area, returning early last week, she could see that the United States is paying the price. In all of the states that the Bush administration ignored, China has stepped in as the irreplaceable rich uncle.

From Borneo to Burma, it is China, not America, that Southeast Asian nations now look to whenever they need to build a bridge, a dam, a hospital or have another problem they cannot easily resolve. China’s leaders are usually more than happy to oblige.

Consider Indonesia. Clinton spent a day there and praised the nation’s democratic institutions. In contrast, Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang spent four days there in December, in part to have a look at a new bridge China is building between Madura Island and the mainland, at a cost of $230 million.

China’s largesse does not stop there. Country by country throughout the region, senior Chinese leaders are constant, smiling visitors, and while on these visits they invariably strike new trade deals or make generous financial-aid offers, including these in recent weeks:

UIn Thailand, China provided $500,000 for treatment of victims in a nightclub fire, while also pledging to continue buying most of Thailand’s rubber production, despite the economic downturn.

UIn Malaysia, China agreed to a joint venture for pharmaceutical research and pledged funds to pay for new navigational aids in the Straits of Melaka.

UIn Cambodia, China promised $215 million in new aid this year, more than any other country, and is already helping to build roads, dams and other infrastructure.

Of course, the United States also provides many millions of dollars of aid. But there’s a difference. American aid comes with numerous strings attached.

For example, the United States and dozens of other nations, non-governmental agencies and donor groups give hundreds of millions of dollars to Cambodia each year — almost $1 billion for 2009. But most of them say they are conditioning that aid on progress tackling endemic corruption, government impunity and other daunting problems.

China worries about none of that. Its foreign policy philosophy — non interference with other nations’ internal affairs — proves to be most congenial for the countries it aids. It had only one condition for Cambodia. To get the $215 million, Phnom Penh had to say it agreed with Beijing’s one-China policy, a slap at Taiwan.

In Washington, meanwhile, before Clinton visited last week, leaders of all the State Department bureaus competed with each other to get their issues, requests and concerns into her talking points. In truth, however, when Clinton first planned her Asian trip, she had no intention to visit Indonesia, her only Southeast Asian destination. Her initial plan was to visit Japan, China and South Korea — the very same destinations former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited on her frequent visits to the region.

Obama’s request

A senior administration official in Washington told me she added Indonesia to the itinerary only after President Obama asked her to. (He grew up there.)

How did Washington find itself in this fix? On one of her Asian trips four years ago, Rice flew into a storm of criticism for her decision not to attend the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations convention. I was traveling with her, and a senior Asian diplomat told me: “Lots of people were offended by this decision.”

So, to make amends, she took a quick detour from China to visit a Thai school ravaged by the tsunami and rebuilt with U.S. help. Rice’s visit lasted 41 minutes; her driver stayed in the car and kept the engine running.

As she left, a Thai reporter asked her: “Why aren’t you going to ASEAN?”

Thailand’s deputy prime minister, who had come along for the visit, snapped: “’Tsunami questions only!”’

Rice said, “I am here to show that I care about Southeast Asia.”

X Joel Brinkley is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a professor of journalism at Stanford University. McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.