(Bloomberg) -- A summit in Laos this week was an opportunity for the Biden administration to showcase the relationships it has cultivated across Asia since renewing a diplomatic push three years ago. Instead, China appeared to seize the moment with a slate of new agreements.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang used the Association of Southeast Asian Nations gathering that concludes Friday to advance his nations’ economic interests across the Indo-Pacific, even as the US and its allies pressed Beijing over aggressive behavior in the East and South China Seas.
China and the 10-nation regional grouping known as Asean announced plans to upgrade and broaden an existing trade deal. Li also pitched accelerating rail projects with Thailand and Cambodia, and agreed to lift restrictions on lobster imports from Australia by year end, removing one of the last trade barriers imposed by Beijing during a recent period of tension.
The agreement on boosting trade between Asean and Beijing is an “important move, especially in this time of growing protectionism,” Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said during a meeting with Li and other regional leaders on Thursday. “It will send a very clear and important message to everyone on the importance of free trade and win-win market cooperation.”
China has been the collective Asean bloc’s largest trading partner for 15 consecutive years.
The summit came at a complicated time for the US, with President Joe Biden missing the proceedings for a second year in a row amid the final weeks of the presidential election. He’s also contending with the devastation left by two recent hurricanes and soaring tensions in the Middle East.
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The summit was a chance for a new slate of Asian leaders from Thailand to Japan to take the global stage and show how they will navigate a middle-ground between the US and China.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba used his first face-to-face meeting with Li since taking office to call for a full explanation of a recent airspace intrusion by a Chinese military aircraft. He also urged China to clarify the facts around a Japanese schoolboy’s murder and a separate attack on Japanese nationals in China in June.
Despite the friction, Ishiba expressed an interest in building “constructive and stable” relations with China. Li said ties were at a “critical stage of improvement.”
The meeting was also one of the final opportunities for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to pitch stronger US-Asia ties weeks before an election whose result could have profound implications on America’s future in the region.
For his part, Blinken emphasized that he was on his 20th visit to the Indo-Pacific and that the US remains the biggest source of foreign direct investment in Southeast Asia, outpacing China and Europe.
With Israel potentially on the brink of striking Iran, Blinken fielded questions about US support for Israel and whether a truce can be reached in the widening Mideast conflicts. He said he told Asean leaders that the US shares their “deep concern” for the plight of Palestinians in Gaza and that the Biden administration is intensely focused on preventing the conflicts from spreading.
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But beyond a joint statement on promoting safe and secure policies around artificial intelligence, there were few major new policy initiatives from the US, even after separate meetings by Blinken with new Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and Malaysia’s leader Anwar Ibrahim.
“The US sort of struggles a bit with Asean,” said Susannah Patton, director of the Southeast Asia program at Australia’s Lowy Institute. For China, “there’s a very clear narrative about deepening trade cooperation, upgrading the FTA, and that plays very well with all the Southeast Asian countries. Whereas the United States — I think its narrative is just less compelling.”
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