Obama reviving US clout in Asia as China stumbles

Not only is China no longer sending its “cream of the crop” of diplomats to Southeast Asia, he said, it has worried neighbors like Vietnam with unilateral steps on disputed islands in the South China Sea.

The United States has now stepped into the tangle.

On a visit to Hanoi last week for the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) Regional Forum, a 27-member grouping, Clinton said Washington had an interest in guaranteeing open navigation and free trade in the South China Sea.

In remarks apparently coordinated with her ASEAN partners, the chief U.S. diplomat also said Washington would be willing to facilitate multilateral talks on the islands.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi later warned the United States not to internationalize the issue, saying direct bilateral talks were the path to take.

What Clinton did was burnish U.S. credentials as a counterweight to China.

The United States is “getting back into the game of balancing China in the eyes of many of the states in the region who feel they can't stand up to China alone and they need someone to pull them together collectively,” Paal said.

China, he said, has also bolstered Washington's own alliance with South Korea and Japan by failing to take a stronger stand on the sinking in March of a South Korean warship by what Seoul says was a North Korean torpedo.

Bonnie Glaser, a China expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has been a consultant for the State and Defense Departments, said Asian nations have cooled toward China and warmed to the United States.

“Most of the states in the region really welcomed China's rise,” she said, citing new trade and investment opportunities there.

“But increasingly countries think that China has been given a little bit too much running room, that there does need to be more balance and that the best power to do that is the United States,” Glaser told AFP.

“I think the Chinese really got out in front of us in the last decade and the US is really now sort of catching up,” she added.

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