Asean/thailand To Gain,being Courted By The Us &china

[chuenjit]

Perhaps this is why the US is raising concerns over the Nuclear threat from Mynmar/N.Korea to re-establish it's influence ?

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/world/07/22/09/...n-regional-meet

US to boost engagement with ASEAN at regional meet

PHUKET, Thailand - The United States will signal its renewed interest in Southeast Asia on Wednesday when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signs a treaty that could assuage concerns in the region about China's growing influence.

Clinton, who arrives in the Thai resort of Phuket later on Wednesday, will also hold separate meetings with foreign ministers from regional countries to try to find ways to persuade North Korea to end its nuclear program.

Speaking in Bangkok on Tuesday, Clinton said she would sign the ASEAN Treaty on Amity and Cooperation when she meets foreign ministers from the Association of South East Asian Nations.

Other countries, including China, have acceded to the treaty, a document that underpins the 10-member grouping and which commits signatories to the peaceful settlement of disputes and non-interference in domestic affairs.

"I want to send a very clear message that the United States is back, that we are fully engaged and committed to our relationships in Southeast Asia," Clinton said.

Her talks on Wednesday come ahead of Asia's biggest annual security gathering, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which takes place on Thursday.

U.S. officials have said Clinton wanted to stress Washington's interest in ASEAN, a region home to 570 million people and with combined economic output of $1.1 trillion.

Washington routinely sent lower level officials to ASEAN meetings under former President George W. Bush.

"I understand they really, genuinely desire to expand and deepen cooperation and the relationship. We welcome that shift," ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan told Reuters.

Clinton is also likely to discuss Myanmar with ASEAN, whose soft approach to the military junta is a source of friction with the West. Even once it has signed the ASEAN treaty, Washington is unlikely to hold back condemning Myanmar's human rights record.

China looms large

China's growing economic clout and huge market make it an important participant in ASEAN meetings, but tensions persist, especially over competing claims in the South China Sea, the shortest route between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Last year, trade between the United States and Southeast Asia was $178 billion, while cumulative American investment in the region is around $100 billion. China-ASEAN bilateral trade is worth $231.1 billion, with two-way investment around $60 billion.

Asked in Bangkok on Wednesday if Washington was trying to balance China's rise, Clinton said: "... The more we involve China in the work we are doing and in organizations like ASEAN, the more opportunities we have to create a positive framework."

"Now, I know that a lot of China's neighbors have expressed concerns, so we want to strengthen our relationships with a lot of the countries that are in East and Southeast Asia. But what we hope is that we all can work together and that China remains focused on raising the economic well-being of their people and competing in the market place."

The Washington-based Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) in a report this month said Southeast Asia welcomed increased Chinese engagement but remained wary of the implications, particularly in military affairs.

"If there was a period in which the region succumbed to a Chinese 'charm offensive', that period is clearly over," said the report, based on extensive visits to the region late last year.

"While nations appreciated the benefits offered by China's rise ... regional interlocutors were often blunt about the challenges to national interests posed by China, in the South China Sea in particular, but also in the overall regional balance of power given China's military modernization

[churchill]

U.S. Strengthens Southeast Asia Ties, Playing Catch-up to China

July 22 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration plans to join a friendship accord with Southeast Asia, six years after China signed up and signaled a challenge to U.S. military might and economic interests in the resource-rich region.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will sign the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations today at a meeting in Phuket, Thailand. The non-binding agreement would give the U.S. a seat at regional forums as a counterweight to rising Chinese clout.

“As China rises in the region, it is in the U.S. interest to provide an alternative great power to which Asean countries can relate,” said Donald Weatherbee, professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina, who has studied the region since the 1950s. “For the U.S. to deliberately diminish its engagement could lead to a bandwagon effect toward China with negative consequences for other friends and allies in Asia.”

The treaty accession reflects growing U.S. unease with China’s increasing political, economic and military power in a region that contains sea lanes vital to world trade, as well as coal, oil and other commodities. The U.S. Navy’s 40,000-strong force in the 7th Fleet has helped police Southeast Asian waters since World War II.

China’s trade with Southeast Asia has grown almost 20 times since 1993 to $179 billion last year, with its share of total Asean commerce rising to 10.5 percent from 2 percent. The U.S. share of trade with the region during that time fell to 12 percent last year from 17 percent even as two-way shipments almost tripled to $201 billion, according to Asean statistics.

‘New Opportunities’

“In the days and months ahead, the United States will seek new opportunities to work with Asean and partners across the region,” Clinton wrote in the Bangkok Post yesterday.

Asean, whose 10 members include Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, aims to create a European Union-style economic bloc by 2015 to integrate a market of 583 million people. The region’s waterways include the Straits of Malacca, 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) wide at its narrowest point, through which about 80 percent of China’s oil imports pass.

Members of Asean are seeking to benefit from China’s economic ties without becoming smothered by its military superiority. Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia the Philippines and Taiwan claim all or part of the oil-rich Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. China says it owns the 3,000 islands spread over an area the size of California.

Island Disputes

The sea, stretching from Singapore to the Straits of Taiwan, carries half the world’s merchant fleet by tonnage each year. China has said all disputes should be resolved peacefully according to a 2002 agreement with Asean in which every country agreed not to inhabit the islands.

All countries that claim the sea should find a “solution through dialogue and consultation,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said last month. China “attaches great importance to safeguarding national sovereignty as well as its citizens’ safety and legitimate rights and interests,” he said.

For the past two years, China has put pressure on companies from the U.S. and elsewhere to stop them working with Vietnamese oil companies to explore the South China Sea, Scot Marciel, the U.S. ambassador to Asean, told Congress at a July 15 hearing. The Chinese government last year said it opposed a plan by Exxon Mobil Corp. to explore for petroleum in the region with Vietnam.

‘Imbalance of Power’

“Only the United States has both the stature and the national power to confront the obvious imbalance of power that China brings to these situations,” Senator Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told last week’s hearing. “We have an obligation to maintain a geostrategic balance in the region that ensures fairness for every nation in Asia.”

U.S. sanctions against Asean member Myanmar for failing to release political prisoners including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi were among the reasons the Treaty of Amity has been delayed, according to the Congressional Research Service. Australia, already a signatory, maintains sanctions on Myanmar.

In signing the treaty, the U.S. joins most other Asian powers. Accession is a prerequisite to joining the East Asia Summit, an even larger grouping of Asia’s powers that may precede a wider economic community.

‘Stabilizing Force’

Both China and the U.S. have an important role to play in maintaining peace in Southeast Asia, Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said this week. Whereas China is “an important market for Asean countries,” the U.S. Navy’s patrol of the sea ways makes it “a stabilizing force,” he said.

Asean’s push for alliances with all of Asia’s powers reflects its desire to avoid getting caught up in a wider battle, said Simon Tay, chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. For centuries, the region has found itself a battleground of colonizers and ideological fights, a vulnerability that remains, Tay said.

Asean also includes Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Brunei and Laos.

“The key is not so much what Asean as a grouping does, but what China and the U.S. do together,” Tay said. “If these two big guys fight, it doesn’t make much difference.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Phuket, Thailand at [email protected];

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=aHD_OIOLNMPM