Southeast Asia is at the heart of a new great game of seduction and influence: former tributary states to varying degrees of the Chinese Empire, the ten countries of the Association of South Asian Nations South East (Asean) experienced European colonization, Japanese occupation, then polarization under the Cold War. From now on, it is the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on the one hand – the “new silk roads” – and the American Indo-Pacific strategy on the other, which exert their field of contradictory forces.
Unlike the big players in Asia-Pacific who have joined the Quad (India, Japan, United States and Australia) and Aukus (Australia, United States and United Kingdom), the ASEAN countries remain in a balanced position: too close to and dependent on China to engage in more formal alliances than those already existing (Manila and Bangkok are American allies), all have signed “MOU” (memoranda of understanding) on the BRI with China – even Vietnam, in 2017. They are also home to significant Chinese diasporas, which China “activates” judiciously by making its members – the most visible, but also the most discreet – economic and political relays .
In general desirous of an American counterweight, all, or almost all, also pretend to adhere to the principles of the defense of a “free and open” Indo-Pacific promoted by Washington – while awaiting the more concrete proposals that could conceal. Indo-Pacific Economic Framework announced by Joe Biden. After Vice-President Kamala Harris to Vietnam and Singapore in August 2021, the visit of Antony Blinken, the US Foreign Minister, to Indonesia and Malaysia in December 2021 (Thailand was canceled as a result of of a case of Covid-19 in his delegation), confirmed the importance of the region for the Biden administration.
New “corridors” of exchanges
In Jakarta, Mr. Blinken found an even more attentive ear among his hosts as China called on Indonesia a few months ago to cease its offshore oil and gas exploration north of the Natuna Islands, in its special economic zone, on the pretext that they take place below the “9 point line” which Beijing claims to claim almost all of the South China Sea – in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. This injunction was added to a climate of confrontation: China is sending spy drones or its coast guards. Indonesia has beefed up its naval patrols.
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