Foreign Affairs - America Is Losing Southeast Asia

Yankees try to talk about Asia without making it all about “face” challenge: impossible.

Highlights from long article (summarized using HexB-AI)

Breaking down this year’s result by country shows that since the 2023 poll, the United States has lost the most ground to China among respondents in Laos (a 30 percentage point decline), Malaysia (a 20 percentage point decline), Indonesia (a 20 percentage point decline), Cambodia (an 18 percentage point decline), and Brunei (a 15 percentage point decline). The United States has also lost ground in Myanmar and Thailand (10 and 9 percentage point declines, respectively).

The United States still commands very high support in the Philippines (where 83 percent of respondents selected it over China) and Vietnam (where 79 percent did) and solid backing in Singapore (62 percent), Myanmar (58 percent), and Cambodia (55 percent). But only in three countries did respondents’ preference for aligning with the United States over China grow from 2023 to 2024—the Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam—and these increases were small.

The United States has lost support most dramatically in countries with Muslim majorities. The 2024 survey revealed an especially sharp hardening of sentiment from 2023. Seventy-five percent of Malaysian, 73 percent of Indonesian, and 70 percent of Bruneian respondents surveyed said they would prefer alignment with China over the United States, compared with 55 percent, 54 percent, and 55 percent in 2023, respectively. The survey did not ask respondents why they made this selection. But it is telling that when a different question asked respondents to select their top three geopolitical concerns, nearly half ranked the Israel-Hamas conflict at the very top, surpassing the 40 percent that ranked the more geographically proximate South China Sea dispute most highly.

Western media outlets often carry reports about the debt traps associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. But BRI projects are generally welcomed in Southeast Asia for the growth and development potential they offer the recipient country. One high-ranking diplomat from the region pronounced it a model for how to win “hearts and minds.”

The United States wants to counter Chinese disinformation. But efforts to do so must address the root causes of why they resonate. China has depicted America as a “craven warmonger” in Gaza; many Southeast Asians with whom I recently spoke, including non-Muslims, said that this characterization rang true to them. Such a depiction would hold little water, however, if not for Washington’s own response to the crisis in Gaza, which has supported or at least acquiesced in Israel’s worst excesses.

Really sucks that Chinese disinformation has so much obviously true facts to work with