The tone of the article is that one should not read too much into the “success” achieved by Beijing and that it is more perception than reality.
The lengthy FT article delves into China’s success in courting the Philippines and Malaysia, the motivation of the leaderships in these nations, the impact on these nations relationship with the US and the South China Sea dispute.
It acknowledges that the back-to-back visits by Philippine and Malaysian leaders have marked a moment of rare foreign policy success for Beijing and that Beijing has demonstrated that a concerted charm, and cash, offensive in Asia can cause even staunch US allies to wobble in their pro-Washington orbits.
“There is going to be a more intensified game of influence in the region,” it quotes Paul Haenle, former China director for the US National Security Council who is now director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing as saying.
The article quotes experts as saying that nothing concrete has been taken away from the US by either country, but that in diplomacy, where perception is often more important than reality, much damage has been done.
According to the FT article, just as China is getting better at playing geopolitics, its neighbours are getting better at playing China, and many analysts are sceptical that Beijing actually got the better deal.
Carl Thayer, a Southeast Asia specialist at Australia’s University of New South Wales, is quoted as saying: “It’s almost universal in every country: make profits and benefit from the relationship with China, but don’t make yourself choose between the US and China.”
The FT articles says while Asean nations are keen to tap Beijing’s money to build infrastructure, the US is also still a more important source of foreign direct investment.
China has sought to blunt the force of a ruling dismissing its claim to the Scarborough Shoal by an international tribunal in The Hague by “buying off” the Philippines, the article says.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte received USD13.5 billion in promised investment and trade deals when he visited China.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak returned from a five-day visit to China with about USD34 billion worth of deals.
The FT article says analysts note that both Duterte and Najib have been at least partially motivated by personal grievances against the US.
Duterte has railed against US criticism of his domestic anti-drug war, in which the government has condoned the use of police death squads, while Najib has been stung by the US after federal prosecutors investigated 1MDB. China, the FT article say, has bailed out the fund by buying its distressed assets.
In Thailand, the ruling generals have turned towards China and away from the US after Washington’s criticism of their 2014 coup, the article observes.
“Right now the carrots are being fed and the sticks are in the back pocket because China wants to test how far it can pull these states into its orbit,” the FT quotes Prashanth Parameswaran, an expert on South China Sea diplomacy, as saying.
“This could well be just another period of Chinese charm that will be followed by another round of coercion. That’s certainly been the pattern of Chinese behaviour before, and it is difficult to see why Beijing would change now,” says Parameswaran.