Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore | Flickr
At a critical time of mounting competition with communist China, President Joe Biden’s far-left social politics and failed diplomacy appear to be jeopardizing America’s standing in Southeast Asia.
According to a poll put out earlier this year by the Yusof Ishak Institute, a prominent think tank based in Singapore, among a sample of 1,994 residents of Southeast Asian nations, there is a growing inclination to favor China over the United States in the event of a conflict between those two powers. If a war erupted, 50.5 percent of respondents said they would side with China if forced to choose, while 49.5 percent chose the U.S.
Those figures represent a stunning turnaround from a year ago when just 38.9 percent said China and 61.1 percent said the United States. The percentage of respondents who said they trusted China to establish a rules-based order in Southeast Asia also more than doubled, from 5.3 percent in 2023 to 11.5 percent this year.
Additionally, for the first time this year, the survey asked about respondents’ views on China’s vision for a “community of a shared future.” 31.3 percent said they were open to embracing it.
Dr. Ye Jiahao, a former high-ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official who worked in the International Liaison Department and defected to the West in the early 2000s, told me that this is all a result of China’s plan to portray the United States as chaotic and unreliable – a plan actively aided by the Biden administration.
According to Ye, the results of this survey show that the CCP’s propaganda, which the regime spends heavily on, is having its intended effect. The goal is not only to boost positive perceptions of China but to sully the reputation of America. “This short-term goal must be achieved to execute future plans,” Dr. Ye said, referring to Chinese territorial ambitions.
The Biden administration’s efforts to push left-wing social policies in culturally conservative Southeast Asian nations have played right into the hands of the CCP, allowing the regime to portray the United States as morally bankrupt and opposed to the desires of most everyday citizens. A group of 12 Christian missionaries in the region whom I spoke with said specifically that Biden’s focus “on advancing alternative sexual lifestyles and transgenderism in the name of ‘democracy’ have backfired spectacularly.”
Father Péiter De Leeuw Van Weenen, a missionary in Indonesia, also told me that the CCP is using the Biden administration’s “fixation” on the issue of transgenderism and LGBTQ advocacy to undermine America’s image in the country. As he relayed, China has sought to portray Biden’s policies as “oppression” against Christians, a strategy which has resonated particularly well with young people.
“Nearly one-fourth of the country’s population, 64.16 million people, are aged 16 to 30. They perceive the U.S. as promoting filth and immorality and labelling attitudes of sin as pride, something Beijing never dared to do,” Fr. Van Weenen said. “Youth discuss this on social media.”
The deterioration of America’s moral standing under Biden has been accompanied by a decline in the United States’ economic influence in the region. According to business insiders I spoke with, some Southeast Asian companies in countries traditionally aligned with the United States are now growing closer to China. One prominent source in Tokyo financial circles called this movement “America Plus One,” which refers to a strategy of diversifying assets and reallocating them outside the United States.
Further complicating the economic picture for the United States in Southeast Asia, China along with other members of the “BRICS” alliance have continued talks to develop a new currency to peg international financial transactions – thus eroding the predominance of the U.S. Dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
If this grouping of nations can get a new currency off the ground, Southeast Asian nations may find it advantageous to move off the Dollar, particularly if Biden remains in office and his inflationary policies continue to weaken both the Dollar and the American economy. China’s geographic proximity to high-manufacturing output economies like Vietnam and Indonesia gives the CCP ample incentive to replace the Dollar for international trade.
The central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates are also developing a cross-border system for local currency transactions, likely the precursor to more “de-dollarization” efforts down the road. According to International Monetary Fund data, the use of the Chinese Renminbi for international transactions originating in China also doubled last year from four percent to eight percent.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative has given Beijing another opportunity to flex its economic muscle over its southern neighbors. As their economies become more intertwined with China’s, the CCP will have increasing leverage to force economic distancing from the United States.
In Southeast Asia in particular, China’s gain is America’s loss. Joe Biden, supposedly a great diplomat and foreign policy expert from his time chairing the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, may have given Beijing a golden opportunity in the ongoing great power competition.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
