Singapore, Malaysia leaders need to be friends with the U.S. and China

SINGAPORE — The U.S. and China have been in a political tussle for years now — but other countries shouldn’t must select one over the opposite, Asian leaders said on the Milken Summit this week.

“All of the countries in Southeast Asia, including Singapore, are friends with each China and the US. We’ve close links with each countries and we would like to take care of those links,” said Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong.

Up to now, “countries didn’t must be friends to do business with each other. Actually, we promoted interdependence as a way for peace and stability. But that consensus is over,” Wong said Wednesday on the tenth Milken Institute Asia Summit in Singapore.

“We reject dominance by any single power. We avoid exclusive commitments with any single party. We just need to be friends with everyone,” Wong added.

His views were shared by Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

“This concept where you’ve to be either with China or america? No … I’d want Malaysia to be closer to america, as much as we’re very near China,” Anwar said, who spoke in a hearth chat on the summit. 

“We, as ASEAN, have a task to play in engaging each U.S. and China, and we appeal to them to cut back tensions.”

U.S.-China relations have been contentious for years and the economic powers have gone head-to-head in trade, technology in addition to security policies.

There have been glimmers of hope that U.S.-China relations would improve when U.S. President Joe Biden met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in November finally 12 months’s G20 leaders’ summit in Bali, Indonesia. 

The 2 presidents spoke in regards to the importance of working together to handle transnational challenges —corresponding to global macroeconomic stability and global food security, and agreed to make more constructive effort to maintain communication channels open.

Washington announced on Tuesday that Blinken may host China’s foreign minister Wang Yi within the U.S. before year-end, Reuters reported.

Paul Haenle, who holds the Maurice R. Greenberg director’s chair on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the “foremost driving feature of U.S.-China relations today is intensifying strategic competition — and that is not only within the technology realm, it’s across the range of domains.”

“High level dialogue is de facto necessary. Because when you’ve that strategic competition, you actually need intensified diplomacy to make sure that that it doesn’t veer off into greater confrontation or conflict,” Haenle said at Milken summit on Thursday.

The Biden administration’s interest in Asia-Pacific has also grown exponentially this 12 months.

The U.S. president hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the White House in June and a slew of deals in defense and technology got here after their meeting. The duo had one other bilateral meeting last weekend on the G20 leaders summit in Delhi, India, where they pledged to deepen the partnership between the U.S. and India.

Because the U.S. and China jostled for influence in Southeast Asia, the Biden administration has “tried to listen, and tried to do things” to profit for the region, and the region is “wide open” to that, Haenle said.

“China has taken aggressive actions to cause countries within the region not to desert China and side with the U.S., but to reassess each challenges and opportunities,” the political analyst said. “They desperately need to hold on to those advantages, but they see the risks.”