04-09-2020

FRIDAY, SEPTEmbER 4, 2020
5
America's renewed influence in Southeast Asia
5
CHArlES dUNST
in a scene unimaginable to Americans 50 and perhaps even
30 years ago, on March 4 the USS Theodore roosevelt aircraft
carrier docked at da Nang, Vietnam - where the first American
troops arrived in 1965 - to commemorate 25 years of U.S.-
Vietnam relations. The roosevelt is the second U.S. aircraft
carrier to dock in Vietnam since the war; the first, the USS Carl
Vinson, did so in 2018.
Vietnam is usually wary of antagonizing China with such
U.S. cooperation, but the Hanoi leadership seemingly decided
it necessary to bring the Americans ashore at this moment,
given China's unrelenting militarization of the South China
Sea.
The rest of Southeast Asia, however, does not echo
Vietnam's relative American affinity. Thanks to U.S. President
donald Trump's antagonism and diplomatic distance,
regional confidence in the United States has declined:
Southeast Asians now believe that China has more regional
power and influence than the United States and will have
considerably more in ten years.
But the region is not lost. The United States can "win back"
Southeast Asia by spearheading collective security and
multilateral economic efforts there, abandoning the Cold Warlike
conception of competition with China, and, above all,
being patient. Ultimately, the United States can secure its
abiding regional interests by stepping up, reforming, and
redefining its Southeast Asia strategy - and engaging the
region parallel to a rotting Chinese regime.
Washington's primary target should be Vietnam. China
occupied the country for almost 1,000 years, until the 10th
century, and has intermittently invaded since, leaving the
Vietnamese with a healthy distrust of their northern neighbor.
Modern China-Vietnam relations thus oscillate between
"cooperation and struggle."
"The Vietnamese can't trust the Chinese," said Vietnamese
historian duong Trung Quoc. "We've had too much practice."
Such lacking trust is evident in their current relations. Months
after the two countries' defense ministers met in 2019 to
demonstrate their military ties, a former senior Vietnamese
foreign ministry official publicly accused China of
"intimidation and coercion," questioning whether Beijing and
Hanoi could ever negotiate claims to the South China Sea in
"good faith." Tensions boiled over this April, when a Chinese
maritime surveillance vessel sank a Vietnamese fishing boat in
the sea.
While the Vietnam War is now history, Vietnam's struggle
against China remains ongoing. "it will never end," said one
Vietnamese millennial. "With the Chinese, how can it ever
end?" in 2017, 80 percent of Vietnamese deemed China's
power and influence a "major threat." in 2020, over 95
percent of Vietnamese business, public sector, and civil society
elite expressed worry about China's "growing regional political
and strategic influence."
On the other hand, 84 percent of the Vietnamese public
The U.S. can still secure its abiding regional interests.
holds favorable opinions of the United States. Of those same
elites, over 76 percent said that they welcomed American
political and strategic influence. Meanwhile, Washington and
Hanoi have become strategic partners in all but name.
But Vietnam, thanks to its long history of Chinese, French,
Japanese, and American occupation, hinges its foreign policy
on the "three nos": no formal military alliances; no hosting
foreign military bases; no explicit alignment with any single
outside actor. And yet, its 2019 defense white paper
proclaimed that Vietnam "will consider developing necessary,
appropriate defense and military relations with other
countries," signaling some surprising if understated
willingness to move more definitively into Washington's orbit.
if the United States plays its cards right, the roosevelt's
docking at da Nang - the Vietnamese city closest to the South
China Sea's disputed waters and islands - could be the first
Photo: Shealah Craighead
step in such "appropriate" U.S.-Vietnam relations.
The United States has already conducted joint military exercises
with Southeast Asian countries including the Philippines, Thailand,
Malaysia, and indonesia. in September 2019, the United States
even launched the first-ever U.S.-ASEAN joint naval exercises,
which took place in the South China Sea.
Months later, though, China flexed its muscles there, its
coast guard ships escorting dozens of Chinese fishing boats
through indonesian waters. Jakarta carefully deployed
warships and four F-16 jet fighters to drive away China - a
major investor in indonesian infrastructure - without
escalating tensions.
This episode epitomizes Southeast Asia's approach to China.
The underdeveloped region balks at Chinese aggression, debttrapping,
and failure to involve locals in development projects,
but relies on Chinese investment. Geography, China's might
and Southeast Asia's underdevelopment renders necessary
functional relations with the Asian giant.
But Chinese President and Communist Party General
Secretary Xi Jinping is undermining his country's ascendancy,
pushing many Southeast Asian leaders away from Beijing's
proposed "community of common destiny" that "injects a
sense of determinism about the inevitability of the intertwined
destiny between China and ASEAN member states."
Xi has replaced China's collective leadership structure with
strongman rule, creating a qualitatively different regime
whose foreign policy is impulsive, rather than pragmatic. Xi
ended the "Golden Age" of Chinese diplomacy by
transforming the country's soft-spoken envoys into "Wolf
Warriors" who publicly quarrel with foreign governments and
media to satisfy the nationalist audience watching at home.
His foreign policy recklessness is evident in both China's
recent violence in the indian Himalayas and extension of
territorial claims in Bhutan.
Such aggression subverts Chinese efforts to bring Southeast
Asia into the Sino-centric "community of common destiny."
indeed, Beijing's bombast, coupled with its growing
militarization and coercive tendencies, ensures that most of
Southeast Asia will keep open its diplomatic options for fears
of becoming Chinese vassals. Cambodia and laos are
cautionary tales.
The region yearns for ties with both Beijing and
Washington, a position Singaporean Prime Minister lee
Hsien loong has repeatedly made plain. in 2019, he said that
while he welcomed proposals for "indo-Pacific cooperation,"
these plans must not "create rival blocs, deepen fault lines or
force countries to take sides."
Unfortunately, the Trump administration has ignored
Southeast Asia's bicephalous hopes to unwisely imply the
existence of Cold War-like rival blocs and thus a binary choice
between Washington and Beijing, even though the
international landscape is not comparable to the Soviet era,
and even though 21st century China poses a much more
daunting challenge than the 20th century Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, the security environment today is far more benign
than it was then, while middle power countries - like those in
Southeast Asia - have far more agency.
China and the EU: a
tale of two summits
THErESA FAllON
initially planned for March
2020, the 22nd annual EU-
China Summit was held by
video-link on June 22 due
to the COVid-19
pandemic. This was the
second EU-China summit
after the March 2019
publication of the
European Commission's
paper "EU-China - A
strategic outlook," which
labeled China as a
"systemic rival." The paper
recognized that "the
balance of challenges and
opportunities presented by
from all foreign countries,
the mechanism is mainly
directed at China. This is
even more relevant in the
wake of the coronavirus
crisis, when many EU
member states are in need
of cash and tempted to sell
off strategic assets.
decisions on Fdi under the
mechanism are ultimately
left to member states, but
the mechanism
nevertheless represents a
clear step forward in this
area.
When the EU and China
held their annual summit
in July 2019, they managed
events in Hong Kong.
When the pandemic hit
Europe, individual EU
member states initially
refused to share medical
supplies. China promptly
stepped in to furnish them.
However, China's rather
clunky propaganda left a
bad taste, especially since
European leaders were
asked to be discreet about
the aid they sent to Wuhan
at the beginning of the
COVid-19 pandemic. By
contrast, China has
trumpeted its "mask
diplomacy," often
conflating sales with aid
The specter of another Sino-Indian war has raised worries that one of the horrors of that conflict could be repeated.
Photo: Wikimedia
The internment of Chinese Indians
European Council leaders participate in a media conference at the conclusion
of an EU-China summit in 2020.
Photo: Yves Herman
China has shifted" and
pointed out that China
promoted "alternative
models of governance" to
those of the EU. The paper
also listed a number of
other concerns including,
inter alia, trade issues and
cybersecurity.
Shortly after the
publication of the paper, in
April 2019, the EU's
foreign direct investment
(Fdi) screening
mechanism (proposed in
2017) entered into force to
investigate foreign
takeovers of strategic
assets including key
infrastructure and high
technology. Although
applicable to investment
after much negotiation to
agree on a joint statement
including Chinese
commitments on
investment rules and
market reciprocity, which
China did not deliver upon
as the EU had expected.
Since the 2019 joint
statement was agreed to
there has also been
backsliding on human
rights in China, including
the arbitrary detention of
foreigners and deeply
concerning reports on the
treatment of ethnic
minorities.
The 2020 summit was
colored by those
developments, as well as
the consequences of the
COVid-19 pandemic and
and suggesting that the EU
was not there to help.
Beijing's propaganda drew
concern in Brussels, as
seen in a blog post by EU
High representative Josep
Borrell on a "battle of
narratives" between the EU
and China. China's
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and state-controlled media
even created fake news
suggesting the virus did not
originate in Wuhan.
But the paradox of
propaganda, as exposed by
Pew research polling, is
that the more Europeans
were exposed to China the
less they liked it. European
public opinion thus turned
against China.
AAdil BrAr
Many still don't know that the indian
government interned indians of
Chinese heritage at a camp in the state
of rajasthan during the 1962 war with
China. The members of the Chinese
community that were interned at the
deoli camp have only begun sharing
their stories in the last few years.
Now, with tensions spiking at the
border again, there are worries that
shameful history could repeat itself.
The history of ethnic Chinese people
in india can be traced back to the Tibet
trade during the 18th and 19th
century. during the boom years of tea
plantations, the British tea plantation
owners brought Chinese workers from
southern China, Hong Kong, and
around Southeast Asia to india's
Assam and darjeeling.
According to Ellen Oxfeld, the
Chinese community in the city of
Kolkata, where many of the internees
were from, is made up of Hakka
Chinese that entered the leather
manufacturing industry in World War
i, Cantonese from Guangdong in the
carpentry and craft industries, and a
small community of Hubeinese that
primarily practice dentistry.
The large majority of Chinese in
india can trace their heritage to the
Hakka (??) culture, a term often used
for the Chinese diaspora in Hong
Kong, Macau, Southeast Asia, and
other parts of Asia. The deep cultural
legacy of the Chinese community in
india can be gleaned from the
popularity of Hakka Chinese or indian
Chinese food in india.
Following its military defeat during
the 1962 war with China, the
community was caught in the
crossfire. india detained and interned
approximately 3,000 Chinese indians
at the deoli camp.
Following the end of the 1962 war,
india amended and passed a series of
laws that allowed the detention and
incarceration of individuals
considered to be "committing external
aggression against india or of any
other country assisting the country at
war with or committing such
aggression against india."
The government of india amended
the Foreigners Act, 1946 and passed
the defense of india Ordinance,
Foreigners law (Application and
Amendment) Act and the Foreigners
(restricted Areas) Order, which
together allowed the detention of
Chinese indians and others in the
months following the end of 1962 war.
The series of laws developed a legal
framework that the Nehru
government used to incarcerate
Chinese indians and other people. in
January of 1963, india passed the
Foreigners (restricted Areas) Order,
which restricted "foreigners" from
entering or staying in the "restricted
areas," which included Assam,
Meghalaya, and the then five districts
of West Bengal. The Foreigners
(restricted Areas) Order explicitly
excluded "person(s) of Chinese origin"
- someone "who, or either of whose
parents, or any of whose grandparents,
was, at any time, a Chinese national."
The reference to "person" in the
Foreigners Act, meanwhile referred to
"any person who, or either of whose
parents, or any of whose grandparents
was at any time a citizen or subject of
any country at war with, or
committing external aggression
against, india."
dilip d'Souza and Joy Ma are the
authors of a recent book
"deoliwallahs: The True Story of the
1962 Chinese-indian internment."
Ma's own parents were interned at the
deoli camp for four and a half years.
Joy was born at the deoli camp.
"My mom and my dad came from
the area near Siliguri (West Bengal)
and my mom had lived in Kalimpong
before that. The camp grouped people
depending on where they came from"
Ma told The diplomat.
"The people who were sent to the
camp were mostly from Kolkata and
the Northeast, Kolkata, Tinsukia,
Makum, Shillong and all those cities.
There were a few people from
Bangalore and Mumbai but not too
many" d'souza told The diplomat.
The selection of people for
internment seemed haphazard at best.
"Sometimes they just picked up all the
members of a Chinese family, and
sometimes they picked up men only,"
Ma said.
"They randomly picked up people
and they had informers who would say
this person was a 'spy.' Some of the
informers themselves ended up in the
camp as well. in some cases, they took
the father but didn't take the rest of the
family, and sometimes they took one
part of the family and left the other half
behind" d'Souza added.
Experts have speculated that
Chinese indians who were interned
were detained because they had either
traveled to China for business or
someone informed that a particular
family had "alleged" ties to China.
There was no clear pattern to who was
detained, the only common thread
being that they were perceived to be
Chinese.
Along with Chinese indians,
Tibetans were also incarcerated at the
deoli camp. According to a former
internee of the camp, there were 200
Tibetans, kept in Wing 1 at the camp,
along with Chinese indians. The
Tibetans that were interned at the
camp blamed the Chinese indians for
their fate.
"The Tibetans hated us. They said
that it was because of us they were in
the camp. We kept telling them ? No,
we are not from China, we are from
Shillong or darjeeling or Makum, just
like you," internee Chris liu recounted
in an interview.
"No one really knows how the GOi
[government of india] in 1962 decided
who was to be rounded up for the
internment camp, and how it decided
who should be released and when.
There was no method to the madness"
Yin Marsh told The diplomat,
although she noted that "The majority
of the internees lived in the border
regions." Marsh and her family were
detained at the camp; she wrote a book
about her experience titled "doing
Time with Nehru: The Story of an
indian-Chinese Family."
in 1962, the property and businesses
of the Chinese indians were
confiscated. Some like the Tang family
from Shillong received a small
compensation for their business,
which was confiscated after they were
released.