Where Giants Meet: the Sino-American Soft-Competition in Southeast Asia

This chapter seeks to explore and compare the evolving strategies implemented by Myanmar and Vietnam in their ties with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States, under the conditions of a rapidly changing regional environment, characterized by the rising competition among Washington and Beijing to win the consensus of Southeast Asian elites. The general framework is provided by the first section, which traces the historical background that nurtured Beijing’s strategic shift from a highly ideologized regional diplomacy to a pragmatic and multidimensional “charm offensive”, as some scholars labeled it, focusing on the process of mutual engagement inaugurated with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The evolution of Washington’s tortuous relations with Southeast Asia and the American reaction to China’s regained centrality among its neighboring countries are at the core of section two, that examines the formulation and implementation of the “pivot to Asia”, in order to assess its impact on the strategic calculus of ASEAN’s secondary powers.