US vs China in Southeast Asia

October 8, 2024

MANILA – Who’s more valuable to Southeast Asia: its immediate neighbor China, or the other superpower across the Pacific, the United States?

There’s an undeniable rivalry between the two in their multifaceted relations with the region, and for good reason. The Switzerland-based World Economic Forum describes Asean—the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations—as the world’s “economic dark horse.” Its combined population of 685 million makes it the third-largest market in the world, next to India and China. It thus wields demographic power and is now acknowledged as a driver of the global economy.

The Asean countries share a common geography and ethnicities, but the economic disparities among them are wide. Average income in the richest member Singapore ($91,100 in 2023) is 77 times that in the poorest member Myanmar ($1,180). Price stability ranges from very stable (with Brunei’s and Thailand’s annual inflation rates of 0.4 and 1.2 percent, respectively) to hyperinflationary (Laos with 31.2 and Myanmar with 27.1 percent). The jobs situation ranges from virtual full employment in Cambodia and Thailand, with unemployment rates of 0.5 and 1.0 percent this year, to Indonesia’s 5.3 percent. Exports-to-GDP ratio ranges from dynamic Singapore’s 108.9 percent to inward-looking Philippines’ measly 12.7 percent (regional average is 55.9 percent). Education outcomes range from globally top-ranked Singapore to bottom-dwellers Philippines and Cambodia (77th and 81st, respectively) in the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment or Pisa. With such wide disparities, it would be ideal if the US and China help the region with a “rising tide that lifts all boats” so that the wide inequalities both across