The ASEAN summit underlined that the region is trying to steer a middle course between China and the US. The last thing it wants is to be backed into a corner and made to choose.
Already a subscriber?Whether it was cooking demonstrations by Asian-Australian chefs, artisanal food stalls or tame koalas wheeled in for leaders and foreign journalists to pat, Brand Australia went the full court press at this week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations leaders’ gathering in Melbourne. Even the toy stuffed kangaroos were made in Australia rather than China.
Right on cue, the next day saw the latest clash between Chinese and Filipino coast guard ships when the latter was attempting to resupply Filipino troops. Manila accused the Chinese ship of “dangerous manoeuvres” after it collided with the Filipino vessel and fired its water cannon.
“You look at investments, who’s the top two? Number one is the US, number two is China,” he said. “So they are basically both very important to us and that’s why we have to not choose one or the other, and we’ve made that very clear.“Because of the position of the US and China today, it is getting harder but I think we can, and we have to.”
Off the back of the summit, Albanese announced with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh that RAAF aircraft would transport Vietnamese peacekeepers, something that would have seemed implausible a generation ago. Conspicuous was the lack of Labor luminaries backing Keating, with the government from Albanese down wholeheartedly backing Wong. Albanese basically offered the gentle excuse that “Paul’s Paul”, although it was noted by some that while he lavished praise on Wong as one of the “finest” foreign ministers, he did not mention Burgess or Shearer in his response.
“There’s this window where the tension between the US and China means there is lots of supply chain realignment towards ASEAN as a whole and Malaysia is one of the key beneficiaries,” he says.