Word: china
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...President is slated to hold a bilateral meeting with his Indonesian counterpart Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.) But the U.S. President's scheduled joint appearance with ASEAN leaders is about more than childhood sentimentality. For decades, the U.S. held a comfortable position as ASEAN's third-largest trading partner. No more. China displaced America last year. Even with persuasion from the popular U.S. President, it will be hard to convince Southeast Asians that their futures are more tied to a giant across the Pacific than one closer to home. (See pictures of how Indonesia thrived under the dictator Suharto...
...change in policy also reflects the political and economic reality in Asia. While the U.S. and European Union have stayed away, other countries have poured money into Burma - most notably its neighbors China, Thailand and India, who are hungry for the country's plentiful natural resources. The sting of western sanctions has been lessened by such investment forays, leaving the Burmese military brass with plenty of money to prop up their regime. (See pictures of what lies behind the discontent in Burma...
Part of the problem, too, is the distance with which the U.S. held ASEAN in recent years. While China, India, Australia and other regional economies have been assiduously wooing Southeast Asia by signing free-trade agreements with the bloc, the U.S., particularly under the presidency of George W. Bush, kept ASEAN at arm's length. One reason was Burma's accession to ASEAN in 1997, which put the U.S. in a tough spot. Washington had been tightening sanctions on the Burmese junta because of its dismal human-rights record. By participating in ASEAN confabs, Bush's State Department worried that...
Luckily for the U.S., China's pre-eminence in Southeast Asia isn't yet a foregone conclusion. Countries like Vietnam, which was colonized by its northern neighbor for a millennium, are wary of China's growing footprint. And in nations like Indonesia, Burma and Cambodia, it wasn't so long ago that the economic dominance of local Chinese communities catalyzed bloody pogroms and discriminatory laws against the ethnic Chinese. Despite the occasional bursts of anti-Chinese violence, businesses in Thailand and Indonesia are still disproportionately controlled by overseas Chinese today. As a consequence, even as Beijing pleads that...
That's a position the U.S. used to occupy. Ever since its foray in Indochina four decades ago - not to mention its earlier occupation of the Philippines, where it maintained military bases for decades - the U.S. has garnered suspicion for its muscular interventions in the region. Having China take up the role of regional heavy might feel like a relief. But increasing irrelevance isn't an enviable position, either. In his 90 minutes, Obama will have a lot of explaining to do - no matter how pleased ASEAN's leaders will be to meet...