Two sharply contrasting foreign policy visions emerged this week from China and the United States. In Beijing, President Xi Jinping outlined an agenda in talks with fellow BRICS leaders that directly challenged Donald Trump’s “America First” doctrine, urging instead for stronger multilateral cooperation.
Meanwhile in Washington, reports surfaced of a potential overhaul in U.S. security strategy, shifting the Pentagon’s focus away from countering China abroad toward reinforcing defenses at home and across the Western Hemisphere.
No other region around the world has as much at stake in this duel as Southeast Asia, effectively the frontline in the simmering great power rivalry. Dylan Loh, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and a leading expert on Chinese foreign policy, joins Eric to discuss how Southeast Asian policymakers are responding to the mounting pressure coming from both Washington and Beijing.
Show Notes:
- Politico: Pentagon plan prioritizes homeland over China threat by Paul McLeary and Daniel Lippman
- South China Morning Post: China’s Xi Jinping makes rallying call against protectionism, hegemonism in BRICS speech by Holly Chik & Laura Zhou
- Bloomberg: China Is Going on the Offensive in Southeast Asia by Karishma Vaswani
About Dylan Loh:
Dylan M.H Loh received his PhD in politics and international studies at Cambridge University. He was a Graduate Research Fellow at the Center of Rising Powers at Cambridge University from 2016 to 2018 and a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Political Science, from September 2018 – February 2019. His work has been published in journals such as International Affairs, China Quarterly, Pacific Review, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Cooperation and Conflict, International Relations of Asia-Pacific and International Studies Review. His first monograph – China’s Rising Foreign Ministry – was published in 2024 by Stanford University Press in their ‘Studies in Asian Security’ series. It was nominated for and received an ‘Honorable Mention’ in the ISA 2025 DPLST Book Award. His 2023 article on Singapore and the international order was nominated for the 2024 International Affairs ‘Early Career Prize’ for best article.
Transcript:
ERIC OLANDER: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China Global South podcast, a proud member of the Sinica podcast network. I’m Eric Olander. And today we’re going to cover a lot of ground because really there’s just been so much going on over the past, even just the past week here.
So let’s, let me just kind of tick a whole bunch of items off the list here. Yesterday, we had the BRICS virtual summit where Xi Jinping spoke. Last week, of course, we had the SCO summit.
Before that we had the Modi and Xi meetings. Oh, and I can’t forget last week’s huge military parade in Beijing. And then we’ve also had the news that released not the actual report itself, but the new national defense strategy from the United States that proposes some dramatic changes to how the United States is prioritizing its security challenges around the world.
We’re going to get into all of this and try to understand what it means, particularly in an Asian context out here in, in Southeast Asia, but looking at it more broadly also from a perspective of Chinese foreign policy. And for that, I’m just thrilled to have on the show for the first time, somebody who I’ve been following quite a bit, reading in the news quite a bit, but also following his work. Dylan Loh is an associate professor at the public policy and global affairs division at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where he specializes in Southeast Asian politics and Chinese foreign policy.
Dylan, a very good morning to you and thank you for joining us.
DYLAN LOH: Thank you, Eric, for having me. I’m very honored to join you here today.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, it’s great to have you and especially someone with your broad view across the region and with a focus on Chinese foreign policy. Since it happened yesterday, let’s start with BRICS. This was a virtual gathering that was organized by Brazil for the leaders to get together.
And it wasn’t just the core members, also some of the extended members. Egyptian prime minister was there. Also some of the other members as well.
It’s a big deal. And they came together to talk about tariffs and the current international trade environment. Let’s take a listen to some of the remarks from Chinese president Xi Jinping that I’d like you to help us dissect what he meant.
And let’s take a listen.
XI JINPING SOUNDBITE: As we speak, transformation unseen in a century is accelerating across the world. Hegemonism, unilateralism and protectionism are getting more and more rampant. Trade wars and tariff wars waged by some country severely disrupt the world economy and undermine international trade rules.
At this critical juncture, BRICS countries standing at the forefront of the global south should act on the BRICS spirit of openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation, jointly defend multilateralism and the multilateral trading system, advance greater BRICS cooperation and build a community with a shared future for humanity. We should uphold multilateralism to defend international fairness and justice. The global governance initiative that I proposed is aimed at galvanizing joint global action for a more just and equitable global governance system.
We should follow the principle of extensive consultation and joint contribution for shared benefit and safeguard the international system with the United Nations at its core and the international order based on international law so as to cement the foundations of multilateralism.
ERIC OLANDER: So there’s a lot to unpack in that statement. Let me just first get your reaction. That’s pretty typical Xi language in this current moment.
But what did you take away from that statement?
DYLAN LOH: A couple of things I took away from the speech. The first is I see a lot of continuity actually in some of his recent statements. And here I’m thinking of the SCO in Tianjin and a couple of speeches he made at a military parade.
In fact, what he said wouldn’t be out of place. And there were so many overlaps between the different arenas he was in and the speeches that he gave that it in many places sounded the same. The emphasis on the Global South, I think that came across very strongly to me.
And his positioning as being at the center of the Global South, as a leader of the Global South, I think that’s kind of apparent. I think the themes on hegemonism, on protectionism came across very strongly. That’s a very daily viewed swipe at the United States, of course.
And that message is being amplified. And the number of times he has intervened on talking about that, I think is strong as well and visible. Next, the other thing that stands out for me is how China is also fast positioning itself as the upholder, the defender of the international order.
And how all of these essentially China-friendly, China-inflected institutions are the institutions that are truly democratic, truly open and non-hegemonic. So all of these themes and narratives are interrelated, but yet still discrete and distinct. What I do see as something new is, of course, his Global Governance Initiative that he first outlined last week, and he made mention here.
So I do expect Global Governance Initiative to feature much more prominently, not only in his speeches, but I would imagine in a lot of the official documents, in a lot of the senior politicians and officials’ speeches moving forward as well.
ERIC OLANDER: I want to get back to the GGI, which, of course, we talked about this earlier, is in addition to the GDI, GSI, GCI, the Global Development, Security and Civilization Initiatives, as well as the Global AI Initiative. There were some words in there that I think we’ve gotten used to Xi talking about, but a lot of people may not understand the meaning. We hear regularly in Xi’s speeches that these are events unseen in a century.
And that’s a core talking point for the Chinese. What’s the deeper meaning? What’s the symbolism of that reference to unseen in a century?
Right.
DYLAN LOH: That’s a great question, Eric, because it’s one of those things that everyone can readily understand. Okay, there’s lots of changes, but you are quite right in wanting to dig deeper because it holds a far deeper meaning, I think, to Xi and to the Chinese as well. I think when he says that there are changes unseen, never before, like never before, he’s referring to a fundamental change in the international political system.
Now, what kind of changes are we referring to? I think one of the key tenets of disbelief in the world changing is the West is declining and the East is on the ascendant, or more specifically, China is on the ascendant. This is not just propaganda in the sense that I think they really believe in it.
And certainly he and his political lieutenants do firmly believe in it. They acknowledge that there are some short-term challenges that they face, but to their minds, in the grand scheme of things, in the grand sweep of Chinese history, these are small blips that are not there for the long term. At the end of it, at the end of the day, China’s position as a risen power is unshakable and they see the terminal decline of the West as something that is inevitable as well.
Again, rightly or wrongly, this is what they really believe in. So that’s one of the key changes that they are alluding to here.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah, and he uses that quite a bit in his speeches, also with Putin quite a bit as well, the change is not seen in a century, and that seems to be a cornerstone of the China-Russia relationship as well.
DYLAN LOH: And that was where I was going to talk a bit more about this is the implications of that earlier assumption that they had is that so what, so what. The so what question here comes in, and the solution is that so we will be the ones actively shaping and changing international order in our fashion. Now, to their minds, they are doing a good deed for humanity, that this will be a more just, more open, less hegemonic international system that we have together with our partners and allies like Russia.
But of course, they are self-interested as well. There are reasons to make, very good reasons to reshape and remake international order into one that’s much more amenable to the Chinese state.
ERIC OLANDER: Now, you are sitting in Singapore here in Southeast Asia, I’m pretty close by you as well. When Prime Minister Lee and when leaders in Malaysia and Indonesia and other parts of the region hear this kind of rhetoric, what do they hear in your view?
DYLAN LOH: A quick clarification, Prime Minister Wong, we have a new Prime Minister. Well, Prime Minister Wong, it’s been the Lee for a long time, Prime Minister Wong, yes. Well, there are a couple of reactions, right, because the Southeast Asia is so large and diverse and all of them have got slightly different relationships with China.
I would say on the surface, first, it has some traction, some of the talk about global south, some of the talk about defending the international order, especially against the backdrop of what Trump’s foreign policy means and his tariff policy means for this part of the world. China sends an opportunity and rightly so, as major powers do, made the fullest use of the opportunity to, through its narratives, position itself as the leader, the defender of the global south and upholder of all these rules and norms. So, on the superficial level, I would say that such discourse actually finds its ready years in this part of the world.
Now, but then on a deeper level, I would say that despite Trump’s tariff policy in Southeast Asia, even those that are traditionally closest, that you classify as closest with the Chinese, the Laos, the Cambodians, in their hearts of hearts, everybody acknowledges that there is and knows this as a fact, that there is no one else in this part of the world that has the profile, the strength and the political will to challenge, resist and serve as a counterbalance to China, other than the United States.
And that may change very soon, by the way, that may change very soon. So, even those closest to China, they will know, they will know, they will welcome, they will know that the United States has a role to play here.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah, that US role is going to change, and we’re going to get to that as well. Xi also talked about community with a shared future. And this is something, again, we hear over and over again.
And I think a lot of people may just hear that and think, well, that’s a nice sounding word. But really, the community with a shared future is language that’s part of the architecture that Xi has developed called community for common destiny. And that is the umbrella, correct me if I’m wrong, the umbrella architecture that all of the governance initiatives that China is doing overseas falls within.
So the global development, global civilization, the global security initiatives, even some of the domestic initiatives all fall under the community for common destiny. So when we hear this community with a shared future, what does that mean in practice? Right.
DYLAN LOH: A couple of things to note here. On a matter level, a lot of these slogan politics of this course from China are deliberately ambiguous or deliberately vague for good reasons, because it allows people to interpret them in a different way, in various ways, and it allows the sayer to have some sort of defense. That’s not what I mean.
The community of shared future for mankind is another of such a slogan. It’s so broad that you can really stretch it in different strands. It talks about multilateralism, cooperation, win-win, common prosperity, things that do appear in the global initiatives that Xi has.
I do not personally see that necessarily as this broad overarching concept in which it anchors the other three initiatives. The way I see it more is that all of these discourse works together in a particular way and configure themselves essentially to promote the Chinese understanding of what is just and what is right and what’s the correct way of doing international politics essentially. And they reinforce each other.
I mean, nobody seriously is going to argue against lasting peace or win-win cooperation. But of course, in fleshing out the specific details of what it means, I think that’s when you start perhaps seeing the more interesting thing. Who wins more, for example, when you talk about that?
When we talk about openness and inclusiveness, who does it actually include? What kinds of ideas or folks or regime types or systems do you actually include? So this is a recurrent feature of Chinese political discourse as well, especially when it comes from the top leaders.
Very ambiguous and vague, but so inoffensive that you do not, from the get-go, resist it. But when you try to flesh out concretely what it actually means, you can’t really grasp it very well.
ERIC OLANDER: I guess the part that a lot of us have difficulty understanding is whether or not China believes this rhetoric that says, we are all equal countries, we want win-win development. And at the same time, we see thousands of years of Chinese history that never saw itself as an equal in this part of the world. It always saw itself as the apex country in this region.
It has aspirations to be the hegemonic power. You remember from more than a decade ago, there was an exchange, I think it was at an ASEAN gathering in Singapore, and it might have been, and I’m maybe misquoting it here, to Yang Jiechi, who was the former top foreign policy official, which said, basically, we are a big power, you are a small power, that is a reality you have to get along with. And so we hear this flowery rhetoric about win-win, common destiny, equality in the international system.
But then we also see China asserting territorial rights in the South China Sea in a very aggressive manner, redefining boundaries with India, redefining maritime borders with its Southeast Asian neighbors. And that seems to contradict, then, some of this rhetoric of cooperation with the global South. We also see China’s trade policies, which aren’t always very conducive to the developing world, with surges of exports that do harm local industries.
And you see countries like Mexico starting to push back in other ways. So again, there’s this contradiction at play here between the rhetoric and then what we see on the ground in terms of some of the reality. How does someone like you who studies this reconcile those two?
DYLAN LOH: We are quite right in pointing it out. And that’s why I made the earlier point when you asked how well received has the Chinese messages been, and I mentioned that on a superficial level, it is well received, because there’s an opportunity for them to press home the point that they are in contradistinction to the United States. You are absolutely spot on in saying that oftentimes there is a disconnect between rhetoric and theatrical practice.
And that is why I think in this part of the world, there remains or there exists a latent suspicion, as we do with other major powers as well. Because for us, we do see major powers, including the United States as well, saying something and doing something else. So on the Chinese specifically, you are quite right when he talks about sovereign equality, when he talks about non-hegemonism, some of its practices on the ground does contradict that.
There’s no reconciliation that needs to be done because on one hand, on one hand, they do want to tell the China story well, that is a clear direction that is being given. On the other hand, you are trying to assert and protect and advance Chinese national and strategic interests every turn. These goals are at odds, but they are still being pursued simultaneously.
But I don’t think that indicates any sort of reconciliation that is needed to be. We simply see it where we are situated as small middle country in Southeast Asia. What we see it simply as, okay, there is this disconnect, something doesn’t quite end up with what you say versus what you do.
Now, I will add that the Chinese are very adept at learning and innovating. There can be some costs to China’s national interest via image, reputational costs, when what it says, what it says, doesn’t live up to what it says. The Mofuria diplomacy is a great example where we see them making tactical shift.
So they are more than, history has taught us, they are more than well positioned to learn from and adapt. But I see a fundamental contradiction and if you are a true Marxist, as all Chinese should be, central contradiction in China. This contradiction is a recurring feature and it’s there.
It’s just part of how Chinese conduct their business in foreign affairs.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, let’s turn our attention to the United States. Obviously, as you pointed out, they are really the only power in this region that can serve as a counterbalance. Some very profound changes potentially coming to US defense policy.
We’ll get to that. But I just, first of all, we’re on the BRICS. Donald Trump’s senior trade advisor, Peter Navarro, responded to the BRICS gathering and I’d like to get your take on what he said.
PETER NAVARRO SOUNDBITE: Let’s see how this is going to work out. Okay, rushing it into bed with China. China claims they own Vladivostok, the Russian port, and they’re already through massive illegal immigration into Siberia, basically colonizing Siberia, which is the biggest landmass of the semi-empire.
So good luck with that, Putin. And then India, of course, has been at war with China for decades. And I just remembered, yeah, it was China that gave Pakistan a nuclear bomb.
You got ships flying around the Indian Ocean now with Chinese flags. Modi, see how you kind of work that out. And meanwhile, the Brazil economy is going down the tubes because of Lula’s socialist policies while they keep the real leader of that country in a cell.
So let’s see what happens. But the bottom line is, none of these countries can survive if they don’t sell to the United States. And when they sell to the United States, they’re like vampires sucking their blood dry with their unfair trade practices.
So look, let’s see what happens. But I don’t see how the BRIC alliance stays together since historically they all hate each other and kill each other.
ERIC OLANDER: Okay. That is a very Trumpian answer to all this. When you hear Peter Navarro lay it out the way he did, what’s your reaction?
I saw you wincing there a few times, but what’s your reaction?
DYLAN LOH: As you point out, this is a very Trump way of dealing with it. The way in which he dismisses some of these concerns or underestimates even some of the dynamics that’s emerging. But I will say that at the fundamental level, this belief that BRICs can somehow emerge as an anti-West coalition that is powerful, coherent, and the feeling that that’s not possible, I actually tend to be sympathetic to that point of view because a lot of the factors that allow say your Brazil and your India to move closer to China are driven by temporal reasons.
Of course, there’s a separate question of whether or not this can portend longer term structural changes. I think the jury is still out on that, but where I stand looking out at BRICs and what it’s doing, I don’t think that they, or even SCO for that matter, I think they lack really that coherence, unifying force and mandate. China and Russia in particular would like to cast the US as the enemy and you always need some sort of external threat to really have the group cohere.
But there’s enough diversity in the group such that that is very difficult to achieve. Now, by no means impossible, but very difficult to achieve. So I don’t think BRICs is going to emerge.
My own sense is that it’s not going to emerge into a very clear anti-West organization that is powerful and this meaningfully presents itself as a counterpoint to the United States and its partners.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, we just saw the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit and the convening power that she demonstrated by pulling together leaders from Iran, Russia, Pakistan, India, even Southeast Asia and Central Asia was impressive. Obviously the BRICs is becoming more visible. Neither the BRICs nor the SCO have many accomplishments to their name, despite the fact that they’ve been around for more than decades in the case of the SCO.
So I guess the simple, straightforward question is what’s the point of these groups if they’re not producing trade agreements, currencies, coordinated policy actions? Is it just a gathering to express grievance against the West or is there something deeper there that people should be aware of?
DYLAN LOH: Excellent question. I think for a lot of folks in the West, they dismiss symbolism. They see symbolism as the opposite of policies or concrete initiatives.
But I would say that it is viewed quite differently. In many ways, political symbolism is all that matters or the most important thing. So for Xi, for example, to demonstrate his pulling power, convening power, I’m able to get Kim Jong-un, I’m able to get Putin and I have flanked by them.
These are folks that not a lot of people can get. I can get leaders of Southeast Asia, for example, facing the domestic turmoil, cancel his trip, but then still, okay, which other country can do this? The message is quite simple.
I have the pulling power. I have the influence. I have the weight.
Now forget about whatever concrete stuff that we are going to do in BRICs or SCO. That’s besides the point. The fact that I’m able to corral such a group of people and you know, talk these statistics, like how many percent of human population, x number of percentage of GDP and whatnot.
That is the point that as strong as your partnership is with Europe, with Japan, South Korea, whatnot, we have got our own partners too. We have got our own close friends that we are able to call upon. And that is quite powerful.
I think that is quite telling. On concrete stuff, we are quite right that they move very slowly, but they are by no means absent as well. So SCO, for example, they have reached an agreement to start an SCO bank.
They have talked about this for decades or whatnot, but there’s fresh momentum. And the latest is that they’re going to do it. So don’t dismiss the symbolism at the same time.
Also don’t completely dismiss the concrete outcomes because they can do it. They take a long time, but it’s possible.
ERIC OLANDER: Some of you may have heard a thunder in the background. It is the rainy season here in Southeast Asia and both where I am at and also you in Singapore, we’re getting heavy downpours today. I can see in the background there.
When you look at the key takeaways from the last SCO summit, the big one that everybody is talking about was that picture and that video of Modi, Putin and Xi and Modi even holding hands with Putin, going down the walkway, laugh and joke it up with Xi. Donald Trump’s response to that was that they’re conspiring and we might have lost India to China or India and Russia to China. The optics of that picture and that video was very, very powerful.
What’s your takeaway from that? What did you think?
DYLAN LOH: Indeed, it is a very powerful, symbolic statement. Although I do note that Trump subsequently walked back on his statement and said that India-US ties are as strong as ever. And that is really a very core feature of Trump’s foreign policy.
I think what it shows is the emphasis on promoting a multi-polar world order. When you have in the SCO Modi, Putin, Xi and you have in the military parade Kim Jong-un, Putin, the Malaysian, Indonesian presidents together with him, it shows that or feeds into the narrative that we are entering a multi-polar world order, which is what China has been advocating for. A global system with multiple power centers.
Of course, again, this is what they say. In reality, we don’t know if that’s what they want. But nevertheless, it’s a very clear, symbolic, but also very powerful image that shows that it’s no longer just the United States.
In fact, the United States is conspicuous via its absence. This narrative has been something that Xi Jinping and the Chinese have been promoting for a long time. We’re entering a multi-polar world order and that is more democratic, which means that China is the one that’s leading this change as well as the SCO military parade shows.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. Well, a couple of weeks ago, we spoke with Derek Grossman, who’s a professor at the University of Southern California and a longtime scholar of Asia-Pacific affairs. And one of the things that he said in advance of the SCO summit was the US just doesn’t care.
The US is changing its whole way of thinking about the world and spending less time thinking about its global public goods and its global security roles and the traditional role that it’s held for the past 80 years. Then this past week, Politico reported that a new national defense strategy is on the desk of defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. And that new national defense strategy deprioritizes combating and countering China and Russia and focuses more on exerting influence in the Western hemisphere and in the domestic homeland.
And let’s remember that in the United States right now, they’re about to deploy troops into Chicago. Soldiers are on the streets of Washington and they were on the streets of Los Angeles. So they want to deploy more soldiers domestically and then potentially not withdraw, we don’t know, but to deprioritize other parts of the world.
When you hear that sitting out here in Asia, where the United States has been the largest counterbalance, not only to China, but also to North Korea, if you’re sitting in Seoul, Manila, Tokyo, Taipei, and even Singapore, what do you think people are thinking? What are policy planners now doing when they read that Politico report?
DYLAN LOH: So I think there’ll be a couple of things that we will be watching out for. First is whether or not they are going to actually act on it. We will see whether Trump approves of this repositioning or deprioritization on this part of the world and shifts security focus back more towards more inward looking policy.
Now, one other thing that I will add is that there is a perennial fear of abandonment in Southeast Asia. There’s this longstanding latent fear that, okay, US is just going to pack up and leave because they can if they really want to, if they withdraw their commitments, if they don’t say that we will stick to what we actually say we will do. This is a persistent strength and fear in a lot of the Southeast Asian capitals, because as I’ve noted earlier, if there is no US, then there is a power vacuum and politics abhors a vacuum.
The ones that will be the Chinese stick. I will also add that already some of the reactions from the Republican camps of the Defense Strategy Review has not been very positive. It says that it’s not exactly aligned with what Trump set out to do.
There are enough folks, of which Kobe and this camp, that will still see China as the primary threat, because that was the rationale that they had in repositioning from Europe and shifting its focus to Asia. That was the pivot to Asia that Obama initiated. Right.
So it remains to be seen with these sorts of guardrails, if you will, in Congress and the shape of Congress and even folks around Trump advising him on foreign policy that this will indeed be materialized. Second, it taps into the fear of abandonment that has always been present in Southeast Asia. And of course, to the Chinese, this is a great opportunity if it’s true for them to really concretize their presence, the unshakable presence in this part of the world.
And how that world will look like? I think a lot of question marks, a lot of question marks.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, at a minimum, we can probably assume that it’s going to follow the same type of thinking that has happened in Europe, where the Americans forced the Europeans to increase their defense spending and to increase their share of the contributions to US troops. So Japan and South Korea and Australia should probably expect to pay more for their own security and to the United States. That, I think, is a minimum.
I think the key question for the Philippines, and I’d like to get your take on this, is, and I wrote about this this week for our subscribers, is whether or not there’s the confidence that the United States will be there to enforce its mutual defense alliance with the Philippines in the South China Sea should Manila activate it. Will Donald Trump get into a shooting war, as he’s legally obligated to do so, should the alliance be activated? And I think there’s a lot of people in this region who don’t think that’s the case.
And Donald Trump does not feel bound by these treaties the same way that other presidents may have.
DYLAN LOH: It bears remembering that when Pete Hexas was here for Shangri-La Dialogue, he essentially called on countries in this part of the world to up their defense spending as well, and that message didn’t land very well. I will also note that in the same trip, he made a pit stop to Manila and essentially reconfirmed that the mutual defense treaty is still strong. Now, you are quite right, and we have talked about this as well, that there’s always a possibility with Trump that he doesn’t view these commitments as ironclad as what others would like it to be.
I think that the Chinese know it as well, and there will be a period, in fact, if not already, a period of testing the limits of what the US will actually do. And essentially so far, what they have done in some of the tussles with its coast guards and the Philippines, some injuries as well, has not really been met with the kinds of levels of support or reaction you would expect. So I think it’s still open to some, it shouldn’t be open to debate, I would imagine, especially to the Philippines.
This should be non-debatable. If activated, you have to assist and help us, ask the terms, tell you to do. The fact that it’s up for debate and people are questioning it, I think, goes to show the level of anxiety some of the folks here have.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. Well, in Singapore earlier this year, your defense minister was among the first critics of the Trump administration, speaking out very, very uncharacteristically. Normally Singaporean leaders are among the most conservative, the most reserved.
They try to balance between the US and China. And in all the years and decades that I’ve been covering this, I’ve never seen a Singaporean leader or a minister really articulate such criticism of the major powers. And yet, Prime Minister Wong and your defense minister criticized the United States for its policies.
And then the defense minister said that the United States was becoming a rent-seeking power in Asia. And I think this defense strategy, if it’s approved, would validate that and contribute to a sense of skepticism that many people in this region are starting to have about the relationship with the United States. I’d be interested in your take on that.
DYLAN LOH: Yep. You’re spot on and right in saying that it’s very uncommon, exceedingly uncommon, for our political office holders to critique another country in such stark, unequivocal ways, although it’s by no means unprecedented. So we have done so before, again with the US, we have done so also with China.
So it’s not completely unprecedented, but to say it in such stark terms, again uncommon, I think this is born out of a frustration that we have with the United States, especially in the initial phases of the tariffs, because we always felt that we would be safe on tariffs. You guys have a budget surplus with us rather than a deficit. So when we were hit with a 10%, that was a bit of a surprise.
And then you see all the things that Trump is doing in Southeast Asia as well. So it was really born out of his frustration and I think a fairly objective assessment as well. Now, I think we have gone past that frustration phase, how Singapore, at least we are adjusting and accepting the reality and thinking of how best to make use of it.
So that statement, I would say the frustration has reduced by a lot. And I think that’s symptomatic of the broader Southeast Asian nations as well. There was a lot of frustration, anger, unhappiness, but it moved very quickly to one of what can we do, accepting it, acceptance.
But it does feed into the narrative that the US can do what it wants, that it’s singularly trying to reconfigure the international trading order to one that is essentially beneficial to the United States, that it doesn’t really care about shared prosperity anymore. And other powers, including China, has been very adept at pushing home the point, this point.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. The next big milestone that I think a lot of people are going to be looking at is the APEC summit that will be coming up later this year. That’s the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.
Donald Trump is hinting that he will go to that. He originally said he was going to go to the ASEAN summit. He then backed out of that.
Xi is apparently going to go to the APEC summit. And there’s talk that Xi and Trump are in the process right now of negotiating a potential get-together. Who knows what will happen?
When we look towards now into the third quarter and the fourth quarter, and we look at the summits that are coming up, what do you think will happen? What should we expect going forward?
DYLAN LOH: I mean, I think Trump loves the follow-up in many ways. If you look at Trump 1.0 and the sort of follow-ups he had with Putin, with Kim, I think that gives you a sense of where we are at. Of course, for the leaders on both sides to meet, you would hope that we are nearing some sort of deal, or at least a stronger roadmap to achieving that deal.
But I don’t think that alone will derail a possible meeting if Trump, in his mind, thinks that it is the right time to meet, and there’s enough political will on the Chinese side to do that as well. I think it’s a disappointment if indeed Trump doesn’t attend ASEAN because earlier I think the Malaysian Prime Minister indicated that Trump would. But this is something we have come to expect from Trump’s foreign policy.
In many ways, this is a good synecdoche of how US foreign policy seems in this part of the world. Uncertain, unpredictable, and we are not quite sure where we are at and subject to change. So there’s a lot of uncertainty actually leading up to the ASEAN and the APEC summits.
If they do meet, and I do hope that they meet, I think Southeast Asia and perhaps the rest of the world will breathe a collective sigh of relief because at the very least, we get an indication that things are not so bad anymore, and there will be knock-on effects for this part of the world, in Southeast Asia in particular.
ERIC OLANDER: And just to be fair, Biden and Obama also regularly skipped the ASEAN summit, so this is not uniquely a Trump thing if he does not come. US foreign policy towards Southeast Asia has been negligent for a number of decades, and so it’s not something that’s actually new. Dylan, thank you so much for taking the time to walk us through this journey of Chinese global affairs.
So much going on in so many parts of the world. Wonderful to have you on the program, and I would love to have you back again. Dylan Loh is an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and a keen observer of all things Chinese foreign policy.
Dylan, thank you so much. Thank you, Eric. Thank you so much for having me.
And we’ll be back again next week with another edition of the China Global South podcast. If you’d like to follow the work we’re doing, go to ChinaGlobalSouth.com, and of course, if you’d like to support all of the great journalism, analysis, and research that the team in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and now Latin America, are doing to provide fact-based, agenda-free, just down-the-middle analysis and research to help people like Dylan and everybody else understand what’s going on, again, your subscription really helps us, ChinaGlobalSouth.com, slash subscribe. And if you are a student or teacher, you get half off. Cheaper than a Starbucks in Singapore, Dylan.
Just $10. Email me, Eric, at ChinaGlobalSouth.com, and I’ll send everybody the links for that subscription. Thanks so much.
We’ll be back again. I appreciate you taking the time to listen and to watch.
