Lessons From Southeast Asia on How to Manage Great Power Rivalries
55:56 Share

The China Global South podcast is supported in part by our subscribers and Patreon supporters. If you'd like to join a global community of readers for daily news and exclusive analysis about Chinese engagement in Asia, Africa, and throughout the developing world, go to chinaglobalsouth.com slash subscribe.

Hello and welcome to another edition of the China Global South podcast, a proud member of the Seneca Podcast Network. I'm Eric Olander, and as always, I'm joined by CGSP's managing editor, Kobus Van Staden from beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. A very good afternoon to you, Kobus.

Good afternoon. - Kobus, we are recording this in the midst of an incredible tragedy that unfolded here in Southeast Asia last week. A massive 7.7 earthquake shook Mandalay in Myanmar and really was felt throughout the entire region, all the way as far as Ho Chi Minh City,

It shook Bangkok into Yunnan province in China. At the time of this recording right now, there are at least 1,700 people dead in Myanmar. That is a figure that we expect to go up a lot. This part of the world is not accustomed to these massive earthquakes that are common in places like Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia.

They just don't happen with the kind of frequency that they happen here. I've been living in Southeast Asia for almost 15 years now, and never have I seen this kind of quake on the Southeast Asian mainland. What was noticeable though, Cobus, and this is for the purposes of our discussion, and I wrote about this to our subscribers in our Monday edition, is that this is the first major international humanitarian disaster that has happened in

Since the Trump administration deactivated, I don't even know what the word they're using for it these days, but basically cut USAID. Normally, when there are these big humanitarian disasters, the United States government, in some form or another, usually through USAID, is very visible, very prominent on the ground. They have capacity to respond at a scale and speed and with an experience that very few other countries have.

have been able to do. That is no longer the case. The United States so far is not visible in Myanmar in the relief effort, but you know who is? The Chinese. They came in very, very quick and fast. Two Chinese Y-20 cargo planes, those are like the C-130s that the United States have landed with dogs,

with personnel, $14 million worth of aid, Air China cargo planes were coming into Myanmar regularly. We saw teams deployed from Hong Kong, from Yunnan province, from other parts of China. At least 200 personnel have been there. Chinese technology has been on full display using advanced tech. This has been a showcase for the Chinese. And Chinese propaganda has been very busy, Chinese state media, with what I interpreted as the implicit message that says,

We're here and they're not. What was your reading of what's been going on in the geopolitics of this humanitarian disaster? Yeah, I mean, I think it's almost more than implicit. I think that is kind of what they're saying. They were really framing it as a kind of a South-South and Asia-Asia solidarity effort. It's also notable that the US did allocate or announced the allocation of $2 million in aid, but they also said it would be distributed by

by human rights organizations or non-affiliated human rights organizations on the ground in Myanmar, which considering that Myanmar is a highly autocratic government in the middle of a civil war, I'm not sure who those are. And also they are supposed to have dispatched a team, a small rescue team, although that team has apparently not been able to actually enter the country yet. So no one is actually sure where they are or how late they'll arrive.

or when they arrive. They've already missed the 72-hour, you know, rescue window. So yeah, overall, I think China's really riding the propaganda pony on this one. They're really kind of going hard. And their spokespeople have really been, you know, like posting like montages of rescue, of Chinese and Yanmaris kind of workers working together to rescue people from the rubble and so on. So I think, yeah, they're really going full press on this.

Just to be very clear here, China was by no means the only responder from the region, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, and India also sent teams. India was one of the first to send teams as well. In many respects, this also aligns with a very important Chinese narrative that they've been talking about for a very long time, which is Asia for Asians. We've heard that, Kobus, in the context of Africa, that China supports Africa for Africans. And that is a message that they have

to basically talk about not having Europe and the United States in these regions, specifically the United States here in Asia. What we're seeing in Myanmar is that playing out, and I think that Chinese policymakers must be very pleased with what they see. Of course, the tragedy aside.

Well, let's talk about Southeast Asia. And it's again, the focus of so much that's going on in the great power competition. We just had US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth out here. He was in the Philippines and he was in Japan. Interestingly, saying a very different story than when Pete Hegseth was in Europe talking to allies there. In Europe, both Pete Hegseth and the US Vice President, JD Vance, have been very aggressive.

They have a very different tone when they talk to military allies out here in Asia. Pete Hex has said, we will be shoulder to shoulder. Ironclad is the way he described the partnership with the Philippines. And what this brings up is the different approaches that countries that are having territorial disputes with the Chinese in the South China Sea are taking. So the Philippines...

firmly leaning into foreign alliances, not only with the United States, but France, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, go down the list, Canada. And there's a long and growing list of countries that the Philippines is signing deals with, security partnerships, visiting forces agreements, all these different things. Vietnam is another country that is also engaged in longstanding territorial disputes. Let's not forget the

The last war that China fought was in 1979, a border war with Vietnam. So these tensions are longstanding. And there was a fascinating article in the Diplomat that came out, what Southeast Asian countries can learn from Vietnam's history negotiating territorial disputes with China, because there is a very sharp contrast between how Vietnam is approaching territorial disputes with China and

and how the Philippines and other countries are as well. It was written by Kang Vu, who's a visiting scholar in the political science department at Boston College, and he's an old friend of the show's, and we're welcoming him back to the program from Boston, a very chilly Boston, I presume. A very good morning to you, Kang. - Yeah, we are in the third winter right now. It's really unpredictable.

It was 80s a few weeks ago, and now it's back to like 30, 40. Yeah, that third winter, Kobus, this is something you wouldn't understand. That third winter is when you think spring is there, and then bam, you get hit with a snowstorm. It's so demoralizing. So...

Kang, let's talk about this fascinating piece that you wrote. And again, you're bringing a lot of your own experience as one of just the most fascinating Vietnam watchers and political scientists in this space and seeing the difference in the strategies that are being taken and the response that China has towards these two different countries. You write, Vietnam's experience...

suggest to other Southeast Asian countries that the involvement of an extra regional great power in a small powers territorial disputes with China hardened, not relaxed, Chinese stance towards the dispute. Can you expand on that? Let's start there.

So I have to say that the inspiration for this article starts with a lot of the Southeast Asian country reaction to the United States pivoting to Indo-Pacific. Like you said about Defense Secretary Pete Hicks went to the Philippines just last week, and then he had a different way of talking to the Southeast Asian ally compared to the European ally. And then I realized that, well, that is really different compared to other administrations. So the United States must be really serious about pivoting to Asia-Pacific right now.

And then I look at other Southeast Asian countries like Singapore, like Malaysia, they were saying like, hey, maybe the United States is not the country that we want to be in the region. Like maybe Southeast Asian countries need to be independent. Maybe these countries need to be taking care of their own defense. So I think that's really interesting because the Southeast Asian countries were supposed to join hands with the United States to balance against China. And now they are saying like, hey, like, no, they're kind of really cautious about that. And I really like to explain it to people.

And then that brings me to the experience between Vietnam and the Philippines right now. And we see in the South China Sea dispute is that the thing about that is Vietnam has been expanding its territorial holding over these South China Sea islands for quite a lot, especially with the latest report coming out of the Center for Strategic and International Studies saying that Vietnam's land holding in the South China Sea is like three-fourths of China's holding. And I mean, that is really huge compared to the...

We saw disparity between Vietnam and China. And then when you look at the Philippines, the Chinese, they are really aggressive when the Philippines was just trying to resupply

It's outpost in the sea. The Philippines is not trying to expand its island. It is not trying to militarize its island by any means. But the Chinese, they are really, really aggressive about it. But the Vietnamese, on the other hand, the Chinese has been really silent. I don't want to say whether they agree or they disagree with that, but they have been silent about Vietnamese activities. And that is really... Well, they did do live fire military exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin. And they did mention a little bit in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, just a little bit, though.

So yeah, I think that there may be some signal about some kind of upset with the Vietnamese behavior, but they have not taken any like aggressive behavior to the degree that they did vis-a-vis the Philippines to stop the Vietnamese from expanding their island. And I mean, that is huge because when we look at the Philippines and Vietnam, one country, the US ally, the Philippines, and the other country, Vietnam, is simply neutral. And that just shows that something is the

play here because the Chinese, they seem to treat a U.S. ally so differently from how they treat a non-U.S. ally Vietnam. And I want to see how that difference translated into the outcome. So I want to go back in history and see that, okay, so was Vietnam ever allied with a great foreign power to contain the Chinese claim?

So that brought us back to the Third Indochina War when Vietnam actually allied with the Soviet Union to settle its land border dispute with China, its Gov. Chung Kim dispute with China, and also the South China Sea dispute with China. The thing about those three disputes is that they are not different from the dispute that we see today. Like, both governments, they were so determined to assert what they claimed. They were so determined not to give in to other parties. And the Vietnamese, they want to...

the Soviet support to help them get what they want from the dispute with the Chinese. And you know what happened after the Chinese? They got so mad at the Vietnamese effort to rely on the Soviet Union that they launched an attack against Vietnamese border posts along the Vietnam-China border. They occupied a lot of strategic hilltops throughout the 1980s, and especially they even occupied Vietnam

Johnson South Reef in 1988. So basically the Chinese are telling the Vietnamese that hey you want to rely on a extra regional great power to contest my claim you cannot do it because what we can do is that we can bleed you to death and

And then we can show that the great power cannot defend you when you need them the most. So what happened is that after the Vietnamese, they pretty much withdrew from the alliance with the Soviet Union due to the Soviet retrenchment. And they withdrew from Cambodia at the same time. The Chinese, they say like, hey, now it's time to mend the ties between those two countries. And immediately after the Soviet withdraw its interest from Indochina, then the Vietnamese and the Chinese, they normalized diplomatic relations in November of 1991. And they even delay the

settling these territorial disputes so that they can mend the ties first. That is something really important here with us. Like, back in the late 1970s, when the Chinese attacked the Vietnamese, the number one problem on the table was Vietnam territorial dispute with China. But now the Chinese, they were saying that, hey, we could...

kick the can down the road and then we can mend the ties first and then we can settle those disputes later. And after that, you have the Vietnam and China land border treaty in 1999 and the Gobbob Tonkin treaty in 2000. That pretty much settled the two major territorial disputes between Vietnam and China. So you can see that the Chinese had been really compromising over that aspect with the Vietnamese, yes.

And so to sum up the argument, it's a very interesting argument for me because I think the logic that we've seen around, for example, the Philippines is this idea, and you frequently see this logic in Africa-China discussions as well, is that individual African states or small country like the Philippines is so weak that a bilateral negotiation between it and China is fundamentally, basically like...

There's no point in doing it, essentially. You're not going to be cause of the power imbalance. But you're essentially arguing that these countries are getting more maneuverability, like actually in this, despite the power imbalance in a bilateral discussion, rather than when you start kind of pulling other people, other powers into the situation. Yeah, I think that is a really interesting observation as well. Because when we look at the result of the Vietnam-China border settlements, the land border dispute is that Vietnam and China pretty much

got half and half of the disputed land. And over the Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnam even got a little bit more because this is an island that is straddled between, literally on the middle of the Gulf of Tonkin. So Vietnam got 53% compared to China, 47%. The thing is that when Vietnam involved the Soviet Union in, the Chinese, they simply just cut all the talks.

They say that we don't want to negotiate with you when you ally with the Soviet Union. That's it. So I think that there is a lot of parallel compared to the situation right now in Southeast Asia, especially the Philippines. Is that the Philippines want to involve the United States in to settle this dispute with China? And I think that it's a really bad move because the Chinese, they simply either they will not talk to the Philippines and they will coerce the Philippines until the Philippines drop the idea of involving the United States into the game.

So I think that is one of the Chinese calculations as well, because they want to neutralize the Southeast Asian country. And there are two ways to do it. Either you coerce them, like the Chinese did to the Vietnamese in the 1980s and 70s, or the Chinese can simply just accommodate these country territorial demands in exchange for these countries staying neutral. So in the case of Vietnam in 1990s, the Chinese simply say that, hey, let's settle the dispute on equal footing 50-50, and then you stay neutral.

That's why Vietnam has been staying neutral ever since the 1990s, so that they can maintain that friendly ties with attorneys. But if you're the Philippines and you look at your options that are available right now, and again, I just want to play devil's advocate here.

you'll see that because Vietnam has a land border that gives it more options, and also Vietnam has the confidence that it has already fought a war with China, and it's had this relationship with China that extends back thousands of years. And so it has a deeper knowledge of engagement with China just because of its physical proximity to it. Every day people crossing that border teaches you things, right? But when you see the power imbalance

that exists between the Philippines and China, particularly in maritime capacity. What choice does the Philippines have other than to partner up with a great power? Because on its own, it would really be outmatched in every front. There's not a metric that the Philippines would be able to rival the Chinese. And even in that confidence of mounting an insurgency campaign, the way that the Vietnamese did against the Americans, where they were outgunned, but they out-innovated the Americans in their warfighting tactics, there's not a lot of evidence that the Philippines can

have that kind of experience to do that, at least in the modern era. So when they looked at their options, they said, either we face the Chinese ourselves and have to negotiate what would probably be a terrible deal because they, at the end of the day, have far more power, or we take our chances

that we ally ourselves with the US who may or may not enforce its treaty, but at the same time, we're gonna have insurance policies with Japan, with New Zealand, with South Korea, with French, with the Canadians and all the others. Walk us through the calculations that you think

might have happened in Malacalang Palace in Manila in terms of these decisions that they made? I would have to say that Vietnam is in a more geopolitically vulnerable position compared to the Philippines. Vulnerable position. Interesting. Okay. More vulnerable compared to the Philippines. Like you have a land border with China that the Chinese, they can coax you whenever they want to. The Philippines and China is at least separated by a bit of ocean between them.

So the Chinese, they cannot directly coerce the Philippines. I mean, the Chinese, they can coerce the Philippine fishermen, they can coerce the Philippines, maritime outposts, and the South China Sea. But this kind of coercion cannot be compared in terms of intensity compared to the Chinese border coup. And just to further your point, Vietnam oftentimes relies on China for electricity, for water, for trade. All of that crosses that land border. So that's other priorities.

points of leverage that the Chinese would have to bolster your point? So obviously the Vietnamese when they entered the negotiation with the Chinese in the 1990s, they were simply, they had no cards.

to play against the Chinese. You just lost your only great power ally, the Soviet Union. You understood that the Chinese, they can launch a second invasion of Vietnam at any time, especially when the Vietnamese were still occupied with the problem in Cambodia. The Vietnamese economy was going bankrupt in the 1990s. Basically, the Vietnamese have no leverage vis-a-vis the Chinese in the 1990s. But the outcome was that the Chinese, they were willing to split everything half and half with the Vietnamese.

And that is something really remarkable here is that the Chinese, they understood their leverage, but they wanted to stick the relationship with Vietnam over the long term. Like you can coerce your neighbor for just one or two times in the 1990s. But if your neighbor is not happy, then the Chinese, they could not safeguard their southern border because they are long term enemies.

Strategy policy has always been to maintain a friendly border with Vietnam so that they can bolster their trade, especially to foster economic development in the southern province. But the Philippines, like they have a lot of options compared to Vietnam in the 1990s. You have an ocean between them, which would be the Philippines and China. The Chinese, they cannot coerce the Philippines to threaten the Philippines' survival. I mean, the worst the Philippines can endure is to lose a few more islands in the South China Sea.

The Chinese, they were not going to invade the mainland of the Philippines, the main island of the Philippines. The Philippines, they can either stay neutral, they can either say no to the Americans, they can either join hands with the Chinese to settle the dispute. At least the Philippines had more options. But Vietnam in the 1990s, there is no option. You either maintain with the Chinese or you don't. And that's it.

And is that what you would recommend today to Philippine policymakers, that they're misplaying their hand right now, that they would be better off negotiating a settlement with the Chinese than facing them militarily? I would say that if the Philippines can strike a deal with the Chinese in exchange for the U.S. military involvement, the Chinese would guarantee a 50-50% split like they did with the Vietnamese in the 1990s. And I think that's a better deal, right?

compared to what the Philippines can get right now. Because right now, the Philippines' get is zero. The Americans are not willing to defend the Philippines anyway, and the Chinese, they are coercing the Philippines anyway. The Americans say they will. They say they will. We don't know if that's really the case, though. So I were to say that, I mean, but if you look at other cases right now, Vietnam and the Soviet Union, they were allies, really close allies in the 1970s. So what happened when the Chinese invaded the Vietnamese territory in 1979? The Soviet Union did nothing.

They simply just say like, hey, you can do it on your own. We would not do anything to help you. What the Soviet Union did in 1988 when the Chinese, they invaded, they occupied Vietnam South, Johnson South Reef was that they did nothing. The Soviet Navy was in Cameroon Bay. They did nothing. So I would not expect the Soviet, the United States to undertake any different course of action, even more so when the Soviet Union is a Chinese nation.

neighbor like remember the sign of soviet land border that's so long that the chinese they can launch an invasion of china anytime that they want to but even that option was out of the question for the soviet because to do that was so costly and the only state is just like a pacific ocean away from the philippines

What could happen to the United States if it did not honor its defense commitment with the Philippines? Like nothing, you can lose an ally, but the Philippines is not a good ally in the first place to begin with. You can lose a few islands in South China Sea and that would not threaten U.S. security in any aspect. The Philippines is not South Korea, it's not Japan. So I would say that we might need to be really cautious about what the United States prepare to promise to defend the Philippines.

There's recently been talks about possible security cooperation between Vietnam and Indonesia, if I remember correctly, and, you know, like including cooperation and discussions of territorial and maritime issues.

So far you've been, you mentioned major powers, like how does China react to this kind of like middle powers in its backyard or in its immediate neighborhood having independent connections with each other? Like, for example, also this week, Vietnam also announced that it's buying a whole bunch of weapons from South Korea, for example. So in terms of these like kind of Asia-Asia interactions, you know, kind of under the shadow of China, like how does Beijing see those interactions?

I want to say that Beijing would calculate the net gain in Vietnam relations with the other countries. So let's say that Vietnam joined hands with Indonesia to balance against China. I mean, if I were the Chinese, I would laugh at that because Indonesia is so weak. And Vietnam on its own, even Vietnam with the Soviet Union could not balance against China. How can Vietnam and Indonesia can't balance against China? I would not...

not be really upset about it. And especially when the Vietnamese and the Indonesian, they negotiated maritime dispute on the southern edge of the South China Sea. It doesn't really directly impinge upon the Chinese interest. And let's talk about Vietnam weapon purchase as well. I mean, Vietnam can buy as many weapons as it wants from South Korea, from Russia, from any other major it wants to. But it will not make a dent in the military imbalance between Vietnam and China.

Again, Vietnam allied with the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union stationed 44 military divisions along the Sino-Soviet border. And the Chinese, they still were not deterred from launching an invasion against Vietnam. 44 Soviet military divisions. That is way, way more than the amount of weapons that Vietnam can ever, ever buy to balance against China. Indeed.

And China today is significantly stronger militarily than it was back in those days. Let me try and challenge your theory here, okay? Just for the fun of it here. So what you say is that if a neighboring Asian country aligns with an external power, then China will react more adversely. Now...

If we head down to South Asia, we see that India is literally a member of a US-led security arrangement called the Quad, the Quadrennial Security Arrangement. But yet what we see now is after a period of four, maybe five years of very terrible relations, frozen ties between India and China, a detente is underway. Ambassadors are back in each other's capitals. Direct flights are starting to come back. The border tensions are starting to ease in.

And yet we have India there and particularly Modi and Trump who have a personal affinity for one another. So it's even beyond just a state to state relationship. This is a leader to leader bond that the two have. And yet the Chinese are engaging in ways that seem to contradict part of your theory that says they will react aggressively towards any country that forms these extra ties.

power relationships. Tell me a little bit about how India and what's going on there fits into your theory. I have to say that India is different from other countries because there is a huge range of mountains between India and China, the Himalayas. You cannot fight a great war at the top of the world. It's different between the Vietnamese and the Chinese land border. It's pretty flat in some areas. I mean, I don't want to say the northwestern part of Vietnam is not mountainous, but the eastern part near Haiphong Port is really flat.

And that's where the Chinese have been often invaded Vietnam in the past. So when you look around the geography of China,

Vietnam is one of the most vulnerable areas because the border is pretty much penetrable. But India, like, you can see they fought a lot of war in the past, but they were really limited. Like, you can fight, but how... I mean, it took a lot of effort for you to transport, like, let's say a division of troops up to the Himalayas. Like, I mean, it's almost impossible. So you can see that a lot of the Chinese and Indian military skirmishes are really small in terms of scale, and they often fought with sticks and stones. Like, I mean...

That may sound like concerning, but I mean, that just shows that China understands the security that the Himalaya brought to its territory. And then when you look at Central Asia, these small, formal Soviet countries, they're so weak.

Like, they are so, so weak that the Chinese, they would not think of them as security threat at all. And you look at Russia, like, China and Russia right now are really friendly in terms of ties. So they, the kind of this 44 Soviet military division coercing China from the north is no more. And then when you look at North Korea, North Korea can be a really bad neighbor, but they are stable. And the Chinese, they are separated from South Korea and Japan by North Korea and the Sea of Japan. And then you look at Taiwan, it's also separated.

from mainland China by the state of Taiwan. And then Vietnam is the most vulnerable case right there. It's weak, the border is penetrable, and there is a history of border invasion from the Chinese side. So they understood that Vietnam is one of their three main weaknesses. Korea, Taiwan, and Indochina are three flashpoints that the Chinese are always taking care of. And Vietnam is one of the most vulnerable countries right there.

Moving back slightly to the earlier discussion that you mentioned about Southeast Asia starting to worry and wonder about the US involvement there. You know, obviously, there's some overlap there between Europe and Southeast Asia. And in the case of Europe, like after the Munich Security Conference, there was about two weeks of European diplomats and bureaucrats writing angry op-eds in Financial Times. And then they kind of

pivoted towards a lot more discussion about funding their own militaries and setting up US exclusionary defence arrangements. Do you foresee a similar kind of process in Eastern Asia slash Southeast Asia? And I assume the two, we were talking about two different cases here, but do you see a similar kind of coordination appetite and

kind of drive towards trying to kind of like make their security arrangements more independent from the US. I would just say that these countries on their own against China, they are not that powerful. Like you took the US out of the equation. The US we know had been dominating the maritime sphere of the Indo-Pacific since at least after World War II. And that could still not stop China from invading or interfering into the Korean War.

interfering into the Vietnam War, launching war against Vietnam, even against the Soviet Union interests. I would say that if the U.S. withdrew from Indo-Pacific and passed the buck to Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and even the entirety

of Southeast Asia, then these countries on their own would not be able to balance against China. Let alone coordination problem that you mentioned. In terms of capability alone, they would not be able to do it. So I would say that... Yeah, no, no, just kind of, I think you're 100% right. Sorry to interrupt you. But Kobus, there aren't the political institutions in this region that would bring these countries together. ASEAN is the closest thing that they would have, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. And that is a institutionally designed weak institution, right?

by design. The members do not want it to be strong. Japan and South Korea are both so intertwined with the U.S. defense establishment, their weapons systems, their operational systems, that a withdrawal of the U.S. would be debilitating for them to no end. They've made their bed with the Americans and they're stuck with it. And also remember, there's huge distrust, as you know, between Japan and South Korea and even Japan and other

parts of Asia to some extent. And so bringing them together in some kind of security patchwork arrangement absent the United States, there's just no evidence of any kind that that would work. That's not necessarily the only option, right? What would be another option, though? Because in the first place, A, we're not necessarily talking about replacing the US, and we're also not necessarily talking about opposing China, right? Like, what I'm thinking of is, are they...

looking at other kinds of arrangements, like some kind of blue sky thinking,

Some other way of working with China, some other way of having some shared Asian decision-making structure, something that doesn't exist yet. Are there discussions there to start reorganizing the architecture of East and Southeast Asian security at all, or is that still kind of a taboo topic? Kang, I'll let you take that. I don't see any hint of what Kobus is talking about, but what do you think? I would just say that the idea behind...

There is a NATO in Europe, but there isn't a NATO in Asia, simply because the Southeast Asian country and East Asian country, they are so destructive of each other.

So the thing is like they tried in the past with the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization during the Vietnam War, but it was a failure, complete failure, because we know that the Chinese, they still assisted North Vietnam to fight against the American-backed South Vietnam. And when South Vietnam collapsed, then the Seattle thing was just completely fell apart. Seattle did not stick together. It was not, it did not continue after U.S. withdrawal simply because the Southeast Asian country, they did not have the coordination and the military capability. See,

to sustain the organization. Seattle was the closest thing that we ever get to an agent NATO, but it still failed. And then you have ASEAN, which is just simply, I would say that a failed attempt

at ASEAN, some kind of ASEAN alliance against China whatsoever. You have China really on good terms with Cambodia. It's also using money, the Belt and Road Initiative, to really win trust from these Middle East, Southeast Asian countries. You also have Thailand, which is a U.S. treaty ally. But what the Thais did after the Vietnam War was over was they immediately joined hands with the Chinese, normalized relations with China to oppose Vietnam and Indochina. They did not

really think of the alliance with the United States as a balance against China because they understood that they had more to gain from a friendly relation with the Chinese than with the Americans. So you don't see the American leadership talk much about the alliance with Thailand because they know that it's just a dead piece of paper. So if the case of Thailand shows you is that even a U.S. treaty ally will still join hands with China and oppose any attempt

by other countries in Southeast Asia against Chinese interests. So that shows you how high the bar can be to establish any Southeast Asian alliance against China in the absence of US military presence.

And if we see the rhetoric coming out of some of the bigger powers in Southeast Asia, Prabowo Subianto in Indonesia, who's been very favorable to China. In fact, the first visit that he made even before he was named president, he went to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping. He is not going to join some kind of anti-China alliance militarily.

Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, same thing, has been very outspoken, actually, in defense of Chinese positions on the South China Sea. He's not going to join. And then we heard from the Singaporean defense minister, and you referenced this in your diplomat article, who called the Americans rent-seeking landlords, you know. And I think that's the word that Defense Minister Ng used. I mean, again, he's not going to join any, you know, anti-China coalition. So that...

Against, I think, Kobus in that sense, we're just not going to see anywhere near the type of consistency. By the way, we haven't seen Europe step up to this either. There's talk that they need to, and the threat is as clear as day that the Americans are done with the Europeans. I think J.D. Vance called them pathetic.

in the signal gate, yet it's still to be determined if they're capable to pull together to actually do something. So even though the institutions are there, the money is potentially there, is the political will there? We don't know. I just want to, and I wish I had prepared the soundbite and I did not, but I'll try my best to kind of recount what former Singaporean defense minister George Yeoh, a speech that he gave is now circulating on social media.

talking about why Taiwan should negotiate now a settlement with China. And it reminds me of what you were talking about with the Philippines and the approach that the Vietnamese are taking. George Yeo's point is if you delay this 10, 20, 30 years, right?

project out that China's economy is only going to get bigger, China's military capacity is only going to get stronger, China already has the capacity to disable American aircraft carriers through hypersonic missiles, and so Taiwan's negotiating leverage is only going to diminish as China gets stronger and stronger.

And it makes me think that that's the same situation with the Philippines. So if you count on an extra regional power and China continues to get stronger within this region, the negotiating leverage only benefits China. Can you give me your feedback just on my very poor summary of what former Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeoh's position is? But it does seem to have some parallels with what you're saying as well.

I would say that Taiwan and the Philippines, they are different. Taiwan, when you talk about Taiwan, you're talking about a fundamental assistant of a state. Like Taiwan, what kind of negotiation that they can get from China is that maybe...

to System 1 country? I don't know. But with the Philippines, the situation is much more relaxed. Like the Chinese- It's less exten- It's not existential. Yeah, the Chinese, they are not going to occupy the entire Filipino archipelago. The work the Chinese can do to the Philippines is occupy all the Philippines holding in the South China Sea and that's it. So the Philippines, they have more leeway to negotiate with the Chinese. I have to say that the Taiwanese, they are stuck.

Because like, either you join hands with the American to hope that they will defend you against the Chinese invasion, or if you negotiate a settlement with China, that would still be like a Hong Kong model of reunification. That would still not do well for you in the long term. But the Philippines, they have so many options right now.

And the Chinese, they would not even coerce the Philippines. If you look at the case of Vietnam, maybe they will find it okay to split half and half of the Philippines over the holding in the South China Sea. They would not even want to occupy everything that the Philippines has. So I would say that the Philippines, if they want to try, this is the best time to try right now because at least the United States is still in the region. At least the Philippines and the United States are still treaty allies. Don't let things go so bad to you like the Vietnamese did.

and the Chinese in the 1990s. To the extent that Vietnam lost its only major power allies, the economy was bankrupt, and Vietnam has no other option besides negotiating and mending fences with the Chinese without any leverage at all. So far, we've spoken mostly about Asia and about China's immediate neighborhood, and also about military issues, so about the issue of how people are actually moving across the border.

In the case of countries further away, say, for example, a country with a unique relationship with China, like the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is, you know, where Chinese companies are uniquely embedded in the country's strategic mineral sector. And now the Congo is making a show of offering deals to the Trump administration and being quite vocal about wanting to diversify beyond China. How does this play out in

Does some of the kind of patterns that you identified in terms of dealing with other external powers also play out in cases where it's physically further away from China and also where it's not a military issue but more of a geoeconomic issue? I think the case here is that I don't want to speculate too much because the Chinese involvement in Africa is minimal compared to the Chinese involvement in Indochina. So I can say sure. I mean, if I were a great power, then I would not be happy if any other great

power is a cheap even way for my sphere of influence but that is my fears of influence in africa is not a chinese fears of influence so everything is up for god to china here so the chinese they may try to increase their influence in africa but they might not pour as many resources or attention to africa compared to indo-pacific because the chinese they regard the indo-pacific at least

the territory within the first island chain to be within the Chinese field of influence. So I would say that we can say for sure that the Chinese will be really determined to defend their own interests and to coerce these neighbors to neutralize them from any from the United States or Russia. But with respect to Africa, that I will say that the Chinese, they will devote less attention and less resources then. So I cannot say for sure what kind of dynamic we can expect in Africa, but we can say for sure that if China continues

with this current economic growth trajectory, then we can expect to see more Chinese investment in Africa. But we have not seen that the Chinese are being pushed back

for their investment in Africa. So we have not seen the United States putting boots on the ground in Africa to fight against the Chinese influence there. So I mean, it's a far-fetched say with the outcome of those scenarios. So I would say that we need to shy away from speculation. So I would have to say that maybe the Chinese will not be happy with other countries spending their own influence in Africa, but the Chinese will not take that kind of heart and action with respect to the African issues. Kang, I'm glad we brought up Africa. And it's interesting because

One of the things that we're seeing in Vietnam, Vietnam is famous for its bamboo diplomacy that former General Secretary Trump pioneered in many respects. You know, bamboo bends, but it never breaks, and so it blows with the wind. So diplomatically, the Vietnamese have been very skillful at kind of going with different flows.

One of the things that we're seeing in Vietnam is more attention from other countries outside the region to come here, in part because of the changing geopolitics that we're seeing. So in Vietnam, from April 3rd to April 6th, we're going to see the visit of Burundi's president, who will be here.

And I'm just curious if you were in the room and you were advising the president of Burundi and the president of Burundi, like a lot of African countries, has engagements with China. He would say to, you know, Vietnam's general secretary, Tho Lam, he said, listen, your country has been a border with China since the beginning of time. You have more experiences

dealing with the Chinese than pretty much anybody else on the planet, given the history between China and Vietnam. What would you advise, speaking now through the president, the president of Burundi, what would you advise us on how to deal with the Chinese?

And as a Vietnam scholar, how would you advise other countries on how to manage ties with the Chinese based on the Vietnamese experience? So, I mean, I am not a Burundi official. No, no, not at all. But I just want you to try and channel if you were a counselor to the president. So I...

To say that from a viewpoint of simply an international relations scholar, if I were a Varun the official, then I would say that maybe let's go to Vietnam because Vietnam and China, they are trying to expand their foothold in Africa. Maybe we can get a deal by negotiating with two parties at the same time. Maybe we can join hands with the Vietnamese Viettel to see what kind of deal we can get away from the Vietnamese government. I think from the African perspective, the idea here is that get the best deal as you can.

Because the Chinese, they cannot threaten African country sovereignty. They cannot invade Africa.

They can maybe trap this African country into a debt. Maybe the hypothetical scenario is not even real. But I would say that if I were an African country, then I would go shopping in many other countries to see what kind of deal I can get to increase my leverage with the Chinese. But from the Vietnamese side, if I were to look at Africa, I see a place that a lot of Vietnamese companies can invest in, can benefit from.

And especially they are really low risk. Like, I mean, if Vietnam invests in countries that are not on good terms with China, then that gives me a lot of security problems because the Chinese are going to hate it. But if I invest in Africa, like the security problem is neutral from the Vietnamese perspective. So it's safer.

And also African country, they need a lot more help compared to, let's say, other country like Laos and Cambodia. So I mean, the Vietnamese, they have a lot of deals there. I cannot say for sure because I am not an expert on Vietnam Africa. Fair enough. But you know that Vietnam is a major food producer and Africa is a net importer of food. So there's some trade opportunities that are there, obviously technology. And in many respects, from a development story, Vietnam has been able to build

and industrial capacity as an agrarian developing country that I think a lot of African countries can look to as a model of development as well. The article is What Southeast Asian Countries Can Learn from Vietnam's History of Negotiating Territorial Disputes with China. It was written by Kang Vu, who's a visiting scholar in the political science department at Boston College and was kind enough to join us on a very chilly Thursday

third winter morning to tell us more about the article and to share his insights on the different dynamics going on out here in Asia. Kang, thank you so much for your time today. It was great to catch up with you. Thanks, Eric and Kobus, and the audience for listening to the podcast. Kobus, not a lot of parallels, I think, of what's happening in Vietnam and the Philippines that can apply to, say, Latin America or Africa, because I think

What, Kang's main point was, geography is destiny here. I mean, even here in Asia, the way that China engages with India is different because of the Himalayas. And the way that it deals with the Philippines is different because of the South China Sea than what it does with a land border country that is right there, like Vietnam, which has a flat border.

border in terms of being able to access it. But I think nonetheless, there are lessons here for what a lot of countries can take away. And I just think that the way that Kenya and other countries have approached the great power dynamic is it doesn't pay to choose a side, period. And the more that it can do that, now South Africa has said they don't want to choose a side, but according to the United States, they've chosen sides.

But a lot of, pretty much every other country says, we don't want to be a part of this. And when they look at what's going on with the Philippines, they say, you know what? That is, you know, exhibit A of why we don't want to choose a side. Just about South Africa, you know, as a South African, I guess I can say something about that. I think that phrasing, that kind of that characterizing of the relationship from the U.S. side, that South Africa has essentially chosen a side, I think it's so, like, it just shows that they know nothing about South Africa. Yeah.

I mean, they think you've chosen the side of Hamas, is what they will say. Well, the thing is, if they know anything about South African culture, they know that the side South Africa traditionally has been on is the U.S. side. The U.S. has had a larger shaping influence.

on South Africa in good ways and in complicated ways than any other country. And with possible exception of the United Kingdom, I think. And South Africa, I think, in many ways still remains very close to the United States, even though it now feels pushed away by the United States. I think that that's a South African take on it. But I think, yeah, you know, kind of like in, like, even in that case, like, I think one of the things that South Africa, I think, has been very, as I've really realized, is

that there's no option but to diversify. Like you have to choose more and more partners because you never know what could happen to the ones that you think of as familiar. They may have a turn. Well, that is happening at a speed which is absolutely remarkable and things that we did not think would happen. I mean, unicorns are starting to fly, okay, when Japan, South Korea, and China have now agreed to start working more closely on trade.

And again, for a lot of people who may not follow Northeast Asian politics very closely, this is not something that I think would have happened in the Biden era or if Trump was not president. But necessity is now forcing countries to come together in ways that I don't think we would have seen a long time ago. We're seeing more delegations coming from Brazil. President Lula was in Vietnam, was in Japan with a massive delegation. I think the urgency of these types of junkets from presidents with presidents

two, three hundred business leaders in tow has taken on a totally different meaning now in an era when the United States now is enacting very large tariff barriers on its market and they have to find some alternatives and to reduce their reliance. So this is, in one sense, I guess it's a very scary period of history, but at the other sense, I

I'm very excited by what I see because we're seeing just the most dramatic reconfiguration of the geopolitical landscape that we've seen in at least 40 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and if not since the post-war era in 1945. So as an observer to all of this, it's fascinating, albeit very scary.

Yeah, it's a little bit like watching those internet videos of tsunamis and earthquakes. It's amazing to watch, but it's also a little bit troubling. I know, but in those videos, you know how it ends. I mean, we don't know how this is going to end. Yeah, it's very big changes. I mean...

One of the things that is interesting to see is how a lot of structural hegemonies in the US, like, you know, that the US used to enjoy, you know, not, you know, the dollar version is the most, maybe the most extreme or the most well-known version, but even also smaller things like something like USAID just simply as a set up infrastructure network of influence projection. How

Having that, all of that, like all of that stuff, if you just even left it alone, it would have fallen apart slowly over time. But now that it's actually being actively dismantled, it's like this weird, like massive experiment in what US influence actually is, you know, like what the US's relationship with the rest of the world is.

It's being put into this huge lab, and now we're seeing all these different kind of things that would have been crazy counterfactuals literally a year ago are suddenly now just normal talking points. We don't know how this is going to turn out, and I think...

The part that is a disconnect for me is that President Trump's supporters, the MAGA wing of U.S. culture, really loves American hegemonic power. I mean, they really love this idea that America is the leader of the free world. They like the norm-setting. You hear President Trump talk repeatedly about the preeminence of the dollar. They want to be the supreme military commander. They want to be in charge of society.

of so much of the international order. But now that they're withdrawing from so many of the institutions, by the way, there's even discussions coming through the Wall Street Journal about ending U.S. participation in the United Nations. And so how do you maintain the hegemonic privilege and power without participating in the institutions that buttress that power?

And I think in their mind, it's, well, we've got the most powerful military in the world. That may be enough. We will see. But what's happening right now in Myanmar?

is a very interesting test to see whether that hegemonic power can withstand without the presence in the soft power arenas. And I don't know how this turns out, but I think there's a fundamental contradiction there between maintaining supreme hegemonic power without participating in the institutions. That, I think, may be difficult for them. I don't know. No one knows. But I have a feeling that might be a problem. Yeah, I think so. I think so. And also...

you know, those networks were not, you know, they were in some ways they were closer to something like logistics networks, right? Kind of like they, in some ways, they're an interesting mirroring of the fact that one of the US's strongest suits is services. You know, it's like, that ended up being another kind of like field of excellence, you know, kind of for US service provision was aid. And so, you know, so it had this kind of massive kind of infrastructure, like a human infrastructure, particularly, like all of these networks of highly skilled professionals in the field, you know, like building

Now that all of that is gone, it's a little bit like FedEx removing all of its, you know, kind of like regional stations and then still somehow kind of expecting to dominate the field. You know, kind of it's just like the people aren't on the ground anymore. And we have indications that even American corporate power, which is...

not always aligned with American political power is also struggling to keep up now in terms of its hegemony. So, you know, very interesting contrast between the stock performance and the financial performance between Tesla, which was one of America's shining beacons of innovation,

And BYD, BYD is registering record earnings and its stock price is soaring up. Tesla's going the other way, in part because of Elon Musk's affiliation with the White House. We've seen, again, Sheehan, Timu outmaneuvering Amazon in global e-commerce, Alibaba doing the same, Alibaba, Tencent, and DeepSeek, rivaling, if not surpassing, the United States in AI development. So obviously new energy, the G20,

Chinese are very much outpacing the Americans on new energy. I mean, let's just go down the lines of all the key industries of the 21st century right now, and China appears to have at least at par or a lead over the United States. And the United States right now is in the process of dismantling its American

amazing research infrastructure that it had that funneled billions of dollars to power the innovation that really got to where it is today. I mean, the internet was created by public money. The internet would not be created today under the Trump administration because they don't believe philosophically that that's the role of government to perform.

So we're in a big, as you said, a giant experiment right now to see how is power maintained and will American corporate power be able to survive without the subsidies that went to universities, that funded research, that generated innovations, that then generated products for FedEx, you know, GPS being one of them, for example, that they all use. So, man, it's an amazing time to be alive, Kobus. Yeah.

I'll tell you that right now. I mean, we're going to see what happens here. But I think for a lot of Americans who are listening to this, who are unaware of the pace of innovation in China, I would take some time to look at the Wall Street Journal and look at what's happening because the Chinese on cars. And our newsletter, I have to say, because, you know, this is one of the things. Nice little plug there, Kobus. This is one of the things that we've really been obsessed about. You know, so just today it's been announced that they've given the full licensing rollout for not only Uber,

unmanned taxis like driverless taxis but driverless flying taxis in China so you know so that's just one of these like there was other and even more notable research that came out about the flow of Chinese solar panels into the global south which is amazing because like it's kind of it it

proves the thing that we've been saying, which is that as all of these tariffs are increasing in the global north, it's increasing the flow of these technologies into the global south. So the flow of solar panels from China into the global south increased by like 36% last year. But the interesting thing is, even with that increase, it didn't keep pace with the installation of solar around the world. So what that means is that there are domestic solar industries being kind of sparked

partly by Chinese, some Chinese investments, some Chinese technology transfers, some competition between these countries. And in all of this development, the US is nowhere to be seen. The US used to be a solar innovator. It's now, to a certain extent, removed itself from that

space. Not fully. I mean, there is California is on the table, but still, you know, kind of like it's a much diminished position than it used to be. And it's now being taken over by the rest of the world and China, not only China. Yeah, but Americans invented in 5G that was invented with Lucent technology. The EV battery chemistry was invented by the Americans. So in many ways, the base research was in the past done in the United States and the Chinese bought it or took it or pirated, stole it any number of different ways they got it. And

That's where we are today. I'll just leave with one point. I live here in Southeast Asia, and in six months, six months, I went from seeing no Chinese cars to all over the place. And there's three in my building alone. It is remarkable the speed with which they're coming. And it is just eye-watering to see how fast they're coming in. I mean, South Africa's happening too as well. I remember being in China in like 2014,

and seeing, you know, those little three-wheeler trucks that like, they're like little electric trucks that they use for kind of like moving like a fridge or something like that size of like little micro truck. Seeing them all over Beijing and thinking like, wow, this is exactly what global South countries would like to have. I saw one in the Cape Town street yesterday.

It's here. They arrived. And by the way, you've got Chinese EV buses in Cape Town now. You've got Chinese cars in Cape Town and you've got Chinese scooters in Cape Town. So that whole mobility chain that's electrified is on display right in your town in Cape Town. Food delivery is now all

done via Chinese-made electric bikes, mostly in China, mostly in the Gaitan, I mean. Well, Kobus, I am so glad that you were shamelessly promoting our newsletter, which is exactly what we need to do. The work that Kobus and the team does is phenomenal. By the way, we've just brought on a brand new Transitions Minerals editor, Obert Borre, who is fantastic. He's going to be contributing to us from Southern Africa, talking about global transition resources and critical resources trends, supply chains,

This is the kind of work that you get at the China Global South Project from Kobus, from Johnny, from Edwin in Southeast Asia, myself as well, Lucy in Taiwan. We truly have a global team now that's producing some of the most insightful research analysis, data visualizations.

multimedia. Our colleague Njenga Hakina out of Nairobi has a new podcast now looking at Chinese EV technology in Africa. Nobody is covering Chinese engagement the way we are. And again, as you know from listening to this podcast, we're really not approaching this with any kind of agenda. We don't have any partisanship. We're really, I mean, sometimes it sounds like we're pooping on the United States a lot. Fair enough. But that's actually not, there's no agenda there. It's just sometimes it's hard not to. But

But that's where we are. This is the kind of work that we're doing. Go to ChinaGlobalSouth.com slash subscribe and you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. If you don't like it, you don't have to pay for it. 30 days, just give it a try. And by the way, if you are a student or a teacher, email me, Eric at ChinaGlobalSouth.com and I will send you links to

for half off, send me from your school email address. High school students, college students, PhD years, all of you, send it. We have a great and large growing population of students who are really enjoying the work that we're doing. So once again, chinaglobalsouth.com slash CIS.

subscribe. That'll do it for this edition of the China Global South podcast. Kobus and I will be back again next week with another episode. Until then, for Kobus Van Staden in Cape Town, I'm Eric Olander. Thank you so much for listening.

The discussion continues online. Follow the China Global South project on Blue Sky and X, a China GS project, or on YouTube at China Global South and share your thoughts on today's show, or head over to our website at ChinaGlobalSouth.com, where you can subscribe to receive full access to more than 5,000 articles and podcasts. Once again, that's ChinaGlobalSouth.com.