U.S. Drawing Southeast Asia Closer With California Summit
By JOE COCHRANE

JAKARTA, Indonesia — When President Obama holds the first American summit meeting with Southeast Asian leaders in California beginning Monday, an underlying goal involves a country that will not be represented there: China.

Since the Obama administration began its “pivot to Asia” in 2011, the United States has been in direct competition with China for economic power in Southeast Asia, and the political influence and security arrangements that frequently go with it.

“There may be a better term for it than ‘cold war,’ but there’s a lot of economic competition,” said Stuart Dean, a retired executive with General Electric who spent 24 years working in Southeast Asia. “It’s a commercial Olympics, as it were.”

As if to underline the subtext of the summit meeting, it will be held at the Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage, Calif., where Mr. Obama met with President Xi Jinping of China three years ago.

In meeting with the leaders of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, Mr. Obama will address a group that represents a population of more than 620 million and a collective economy of around $2.4 trillion, the third largest in Asia behind those of China and Japan.

Geographically astride the world’s busiest and most strategic shipping lanes, the region is the fulcrum of the administration’s rebalancing toward Asia.

While the leaders will certainly discuss regional security issues, including territorial disputes in the South China Sea, North Korea’s nuclear program and counterterrorism, they will devote equal time to economic issues, including the United States-led Trans-Pacific Partnership, policies aimed at promoting further growth and integration, and identifying ways to encourage more trade and investment through innovation and entrepreneurship.

American officials briefing reporters in Washington on Wednesday did not get into specifics, saying the meeting would not be tightly scripted.

“It is not a laboriously negotiated, strict, by-the-Roman-numerals agenda,” said Daniel R. Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. “It is an open discussion among the leaders.”

While officials said the gathering was not an “anti-China” meeting, Washington is clearly trying to exert its leadership in Southeast Asia through investment, analysts said.

“China’s actions in the South China Sea have undermined its narrative of a peaceful rising and fostered new suspicions about its economic and geopolitical intentions in the region,” said Kevin G. Nealer, a China expert and a partner with the Scowcroft Group, based in Washington. “America’s most difficult relationships in the region are healthier and more high-functioning than China’s best relations, and the deep and consistent American investment there has created habits of cooperation and shared goals with Asean that trade alone doesn’t yield.”

China has been Asean’s largest trading partner since 2009, with two-way trade surpassing $366 billion in 2014, according to Asean trade data. The United States was fourth last year behind the European Union and Japan. Southeast Asia was also America’s fourth-largest export market that year.

However, America’s strategy has focused on direct investment, where it is far ahead of China. American companies poured $32.3 billion into Southeast Asia from 2012 to 2014, according to Asean data, compared with $21.3 billion from China.

From 2000 to 2014, the United States invested $226 billion in Southeast Asia, according to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis, more than American investment in China, Japan and India combined.

The United States aims to maintain its dominance in investment while taking the lead in trade, according to analysts, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the chief weapon in that quest. Four of Asean’s 10 member states have already joined the pact, while three others — Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand — have either declared their intention to join or said they were considering doing so.

Alexander C. Feldman, president and chief executive officer of the U.S.-Asean Business Council, said the summit meeting was the culmination of American economic strategy in the region dating back to Mr. Obama’s first weeks in office.

In early 2009, Hillary Clinton made her first overseas trip as secretary of state to Indonesia, a Group of 20 member that boasts Southeast Asia’s largest economy, and which is the unofficial leader of Asean.

“I think the strategy by the Obama administration has been a long-term one which reflects a whole vision of Asia and realizes that Asean is a critical piece of the puzzle often not focused on by past administrations,” Mr. Feldman said. “Since Day 1 they have focused on this region and understood that it was really the battleground for the future of Asia.”

The region’s trade with China has been robust. Southeast Asia has been a huge source of raw materials and commodities to feed both China’s economic engine and its growing consumer class, supplying products like minerals and palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia and electronics components from Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, said Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“China is also a big aid donor, particularly for infrastructure projects, an area in which U.S. companies have had trouble competing because Southeast Asian governments produce so few bankable projects that U.S. banks are willing to finance,” he said.

That said, China’s dependability as a trading partner is waning. While nearly 12 percent of total exports from Asean went to China in 2014, the most to any one country, exports to China slumped last year as commodity prices tumbled and are expected to fall further this year because of China’s economic slowdown.

The region’s leading economies, including Indonesia, will feel the pain, according to economists. “The sensitivity of Indonesia to China’s economy is very large, and that’s also the case for Asean,” said Destry Damayanti, an economist and commissioner at the Indonesia Deposit Insurance Corporation who is based in Jakarta.

It remains to be seen whether the United States can profit from China’s downturn to increase its trade with the region.

But the American edge in direct investment may be the greater long-term benefit, said Mr. Dean, the retired General Electric executive.

“Our business progress and biggest deals have been driven by investing,” he said. “It ensures a long-term presence, builds long-term relationships and makes us a local company in each country where we invest.

“Trading is short term and can go away faster than investment, and China will always have a competitive advantage due to its proximity.”

美砸錢拉攏東協 暗地抗中

美國與東南亞國協十國高峰會15、16日兩天在加州「幻象農場」舉行，這是美國首次邀來東協所有成員國舉辦峰會，美國欲藉峰會進一步拉近與東南亞國家距離。紐約時報報導，會議根本目標與並未出席的中國大陸息息相關。

分析家指出，儘管官員表示這不是一次「反中」集會，華府明顯正試圖透過投資，掌控在東南亞的領導地位。

紐時說，峰會選在「幻象農場」的「陽光地」（Sunnylands）舉行，可能也與大陸有關，此地是歐巴馬總統三年前與大陸國家主席習近平非正式會晤地點。

歐巴馬2011年揭示「重返亞洲」外交政策後，即與大陸就經濟實力在東南亞展開直接競爭，其中也伴隨政治、安全角力。

華府史考克羅集團合夥人兼大陸問題專家尼勒說，大陸在南海的行動，與大陸自己所說的和平崛起背道而馳，讓東南亞國家對大陸經濟和地緣政治意圖起疑。

此次東協峰會將討論區域安全，包括南海領土紛爭、北韓核子計畫與反恐等，經濟議題包括討論跨太平洋夥伴協定（TPP）。美國東亞和太平洋事務助理國務卿羅素說，峰會沒嚴格議程，是「領袖間的一次公開討論」。

尼勒說，如今在東南亞，美國認為最難建立的關係，也較大陸在東南亞所建立的最佳關係來得健康與高功能，美在東南亞的深度與持續投資，已為美國和東南亞國家建立起合作習慣和共同目標，這些關係無法靠貿易產生。

2009年來，大陸一直是東協的最大貿易夥伴 ，美國為東協第四大貿易夥伴，但美國聚焦於直接投資，這點大陸仍望塵莫及。2012至2014年，美國公司直接投資東協323億美元，相對於大陸的213億美元。

分析家說，美國的目標是在東協維持投資的主宰地位，同時在貿易上保持領先，TPP將成美國提高對東協貿易的首要武器。

美國─東協商會理事長費爾德曼說，這次峰會是美國東協經濟策略的最高潮，歐巴馬上台頭幾周，美國已瞄準東協展開追求。2009年年初，當時的國務卿希拉蕊．柯林頓即走訪號稱東協非正式領袖的印尼。

費爾德曼說：「從第一天，政府即聚焦東協，意識到它是未來亞洲真正的戰場。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/world/asia/obama-asean-summit-sunnylands.html

2016-02-15．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯王麗娟