On October 23, the Valdai Club in Moscow hosted a discussion titled “ASEAN Summit Amid Escalating Tensions Between China and the United States”. Moderator Timofei Bordachev noted that ASEAN serves as an example for Russia and the world of how states with different domestic political systems and foreign policy strategies can establish equitable cooperation without encountering fundamental political constraints or harming their neighbours. This stands in contrast, for instance, with the European Union, which, as he put it, disrupts regional harmony. However, today the association finds itself in a new strategic environment due to the intensifying conflict between the United States and China. Furthermore, ASEAN now faces a question of transitioning to the next stage of its development.
Connie Rahakundini Bakrie, professor at the Faculty of International Relations at St. Petersburg State University, believes the region’s geography is both a blessing and a curse. ASEAN states are located in the heart of the Indo-Pacific: a space that is not only a crossroads of trade routes, but also a battlefield of great-power ambitions. Today it has become an arena of economic confrontation, information warfare, and dangerous tensions regarding sea and air routes. Under these conditions, the key task is to avoid military conflict and preserve ASEAN’s strategic autonomy — that is, its ability to determine its own fate. The modern world is polycentric, the analyst stressed. In her view, this not only creates risks, but also opens the possibility of establishing a multipolar balance. “ASEAN must not remain a mere spectator in the drama unfolding before our eyes. It can act as a strategic conductor, setting the rhythm and turning crisis into meaningful architecture,” she argued. In this sense, she added, the concept of Greater Eurasia could be useful as a framework for expanding the association’s capabilities without undermining its neutrality.
Evgeny Kanaev, Deputy Head of the Department of International Regional Studies at HSE University, analysed how US–China rivalry affects the digital space of ASEAN nations. The association, he said, is now in a difficult position due to a combination of digital and non-digital imbalances; a situation exacerbated by the shift of US–China confrontation into the digital domain. First, ASEAN lacks its own global value chains, and thus the corresponding digital tools. Second, there is a problem of infrastructural fragmentation, which drives the association to seek greater connectivity. Third, ASEAN has long relied on “negative integration” — tariff reduction without supranational institutions, a model poorly suited to the digital environment. Fourth, there are striking disparities between member states in terms of digital infrastructure and technological development. Fifth, ASEAN governments take very different approaches to data localisation and cross-border data flows. Added to this are the “middle-income trap” in the digital sphere and heavy dependence on external players (primarily the United States and China) in key digital assets. Today, Washington and Beijing are building rival digital ecosystems and pulling other countries into them, forcing Southeast Asian states to choose sides. This dynamic, Kanaev emphasised, is harmful to ASEAN: “There is talk of building an ASEAN digital community, but how can this be done in cooperation with external partners if those partners are busy tearing each other apart?”
Madam Fui K. Soong, Member of the Board of Trustees, Malaysian Institute for Strategic Analysis and Policy Studies, outlined Malaysia’s position. She noted that the country has not always been neutral; it adopted an active neutrality policy after the Vietnam War by joining the Non-Aligned Movement. Since then, Malaysia has sought to balance between the US and China in various ways. For fifteen years now, China has been Malaysia’s largest trading partner, and Malaysia was the first to support the Belt and Road Initiative. Yet its ties with the US also remain historically strong — both in security and in economic cooperation. Today, both countries value Malaysia’s industrial capacities, as it is the world’s sixth-largest exporter of semiconductors. Against this backdrop, Kuala Lumpur hopes to play a peacemaking role in the ongoing “semiconductor war” between Washington and Beijing. At the same time, its key objective is to avoid being dragged into a US–China proxy conflict, Madam Fui K. Soong stressed. According to her, Malaysia seeks to ensure that “any disputes are resolved through diplomacy, in accordance with international law.”
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
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