US-ASEAN summit fails to isolate China

THE UNITED STATES and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations met at the summit in California early this week to blunt China’s expansionist moves in the maritime area in the region – but could not bring themselves to saying so in their final communiqué.

US President Barack Obama and the leaders of the 10 ASEAN members tiptoed around the China issue and finally had to settle for making only oblique mention of the rule of law, freedom of navigation, respect for United Nations conventions and such general references.

The summit at the storied Sunnylands estate in California, where Obama also had his first formal meeting with China president Xi Jinping in 2013, failed to launch any initiative to cut down China’s aggressive expansionism in the South China Sea.

After the summit, Obama said they discussed the need to ease tension and agreed that conflicting claims be resolved peacefully through legal means. There was mention of the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas, but the US itself has not even ratified UNCLOS.

“We discussed the need for tangible steps to lower tensions including a halt to further reclamation, new construction and militarization of disputed areas,” he said. “When ASEAN speaks with a clear and unified voice, it can help advance security, opportunity and human dignity.”

He was unmistakably referring to China, which has territorial claims in conflict with the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam.

But it was clear from the start that ASEAN cannot be made in the meantime to make a common statement against China, in whose sphere of influence are such members as Laos (the current ASEAN chair) and Cambodia.

Attempts to issue group statements citing China in earlier ASEAN summits held under the shadow of the US had also failed. It appears that Washington will have to find ways first to wean Laos and Cambodia from Beijing.

• Better to talk of bread and butter

FOR A SOFT intro to the central subject of China’s aggressive expansionism, the Sunnylands summit danced around the bread and butter concerns of the emerging economies in the ASEAN area.

Obama said later there was progress in the talks on trade and investment and that the US was ready to help ASEAN members meet the criteria of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, of which four are already members together with the US.

He also announced “US-ASEAN Connect,” which he said would see the creation of a network of economic hubs across the region presumably to boost trade and investments and their trickle-down benefits to the native population.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong reportedly told a working dinner on Monday night to expect China’s role in the region to grow. Beijing’s larger presence, he said, will likely lead to occasional frictions, uncertainties and anxieties, including on the South China Sea, but that these issues must be managed peacefully to preserve regional stability and security.

Obama foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes has been quoted as saying that ASEAN, which represents the world’s seventh largest economy, is of enormous interest to the US. The 10 ASEAN members are, he said, “at the nexus of critical security issues, whether it’s maritime security, counterterrorism, or counter-piracy.”

The ASEAN region, covering a land area of 4.4 million square kilometers (three percent of the total land area of the Earth), teems with approximately 625 million people (8.8 percent of the world’s population).

Having spent some years in Indonesia, Obama probably needs no tutoring to know the promise and potential of Southeast Asia and its being crucial to his announced pivot to the Asia-Pacific region of 60 percent of American forces.

This shift is becoming more manifest to Filipinos now being conditioned to the increased local presence of the US military in implementation of a Phl-US Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement anchored on an older Mutual Defense Treaty of the two allies.

The US courtship of ASEAN is reminiscent of the now defunct Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, a US-sponsored regional security shield against Communist China during the Cold War (1947-1991). It was a minicopy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization whose target was the then Soviet Union.

• IT guru pushes skills training, jobs

BACK in the province, IT entrepreneur Dr. Cezar T. Quiambao is earning plaudits for his skills-training program for the poor in Pangasinan in tandem with the conditional cash transfer (Pantawid sa Pamilya) program of the government to make them self-employed.

Quiambao, who was cited by then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as the “local boy who made good,” has helped 7,888 poor families in his hometown of Bayambang. From the looks of it, many entrepreneurs elsewhere are moving to adopt or replicate his livelihood program.

In Manila, he has been a quiet supporter of the advocacies of such groups as the University of the East Alumni Association. But he had also experienced setbacks in some of his early projects for the poor such as the grant of capital for business and livestock-raising.

Through the Kasama Ka sa Barangay Foundation (KKBFI) in Pangasinan, he partnered with the social welfare department in identifying and helping the poor, and with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority in ensuring through a certification program that those who graduate become proficient in their chosen courses.

The skills-training courses include personal computer assembly and maintenance, networking, reformatting, installation and operating system and hands-on PC use of Excel, Word and PowerPoint.

Other courses offered by KKBFI training school are Micro-Small and Medium Entrepreneurship Training, Computer Hardware Servicing, Reflexology, Cosmetology, Ventosa, Swedish, Thai massage, hair cutting, manicure/pedicure, hair and scalp treatment, food processing, RAC servicing (DomRac), electrical installation and maintenance, and housekeeping.

In a graduation program two months ago, employers present hired the graduates on the spot.

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