Scott Morrison assumes the ASEAN states will line up with the US and Australia in attempting to blunt China’s growth and influence. Yet China can offer the ASEAN states solutions to their pressing problems of population growth, poverty and urbanisation through its ‘smart cities’ technologies.
A look at the forces shaping Asia exposes the inadequacy of the Indo-Pacific concept as a basis for foreign and strategic policy. Also revealed is the way the ‘big hands, small maps’ nature of the concept leads to superficial judgments about the dynamics of Asian development and the implications for power and influence. The example of ASEAN provides an insight into this problem.
By declaring that ASEAN “sits at the heart of our vision for the Indo-Pacific”, the Prime Minister Scott Morrison simply reiterates a thought found in US’s 2017 National Security Strategy and the 2019 publications 2019 US Indo-Pacific Strategy and Free and Open Indo-Pacific.
Implied in this view is an assumption that the natural inclination of the ASEAN states will be to line up with the US and Australia in their attempts to blunt China’s growth and influence. It is a simplistic and paternalistic view that ignores the situation of the ASEAN states.
Population growth, poverty and urbanisation are putting enormous pressure on the ASEAN member states; trends that will persist irrespective of competition between China and the US. Collectively they are unenthusiastic about America’s confrontational approach to China. The June 2019 ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific document, the grouping’s reply to the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy, stressed “economics rather than security” and “cooperation rather than confrontation”, and fell far short of signing up to the “vision” of the US and Australia.
This reluctance is understandable. In 2020 ASEAN became China’s largest trading partner. However, it is not only the scale and importance of China’s trade with ASEAN, or its Belt and Road trade-related investment in transport and ports, that will increase its influence in Southeast Asia. China is able to offer the ASEAN states solutions to their pressing problems. In particular it is the attraction of ‘smart cities’ technologies and their application to the challenges of population growth, poverty and urbanisation that will see ASEAN become an important arena for the competition for technological primacy between the great powers.
The concept of smart cities has captured the attention of governments and businesses world-wide over the past decade. But it is in China that there has been significant and sustained development and adoption of smart city technology. Even before COVID-19 China was heavily focused on smart cities. China’s approach has been to build domestic capacity and expertise in the technologies that come together in the smart city model in readiness to become the leading supplier of these technologies to international markets.
This is evident from the last two Five Year Plans developed during President Xi’s tenure. In China’s 14th Five Year Plan’s the “stimulus committed $1.4 trillion over five years for digital infrastructure, including 5G, smart cities, and Internet of Things applications for manufacturing“. China has by far the greatest number of domestic smart city projects under way of any nation. By one account in January 2020 there also were “398 reported instances of 34 different Chinese firms exporting smart cities technologies through involvement in smart cities development projects in a total of 106 countries”.
Both the ASEAN Smart Cities (ASC) framework and the ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation Strategy spell out the importance of smart city technologies for the region’s responses to urbanisation, environmental and climate strategies, population growth, and the digital economy. In 2020, the Asia Pacific was the region reported to have spent the most on investment in smart city technologies. The Outlook recently re-emphasised “Addressing challenges of rapid urbanisation through the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN) initiative”.
For the ASEANs, the benefits of adopting the smart city technologies outweigh the instability and tensions involved in taking sides in a great power struggle; however, their keenness for smart cities places them at the heart of the competition.
A RAND article has pointed out that in the past, much of the appeal of the US model was because other states saw it as “an opportunity to advance their own security and prosperity”. Prime Minister Morrison, and the US policymakers, still believe the combination of democracy, market-based economies, and liberty will prove irresistible. RAND asks whether China or the US now has “a more sustainable concept of national influence”.
The focus of China-US competition has been described as “the battle for market dominance in high technology and industries of the future”, and China’s dominance of smart city technology provides it with the potential to carve out a large economic sphere where Chinese technology dominates and its standards prevail. Of course, while smart city technologies hold out the promise of better administration, better services, and a more sustainable urban infrastructure, they also present challenges to citizens’ privacy and liberty, and potential security issues. These risks will not be lost on the ASEANs.
The UN has observed that the “smart city rhetoric does not always match reality” and that often the technologies “do not promote socially inclusive urbanization”. It has also noted that improving the service delivery and administration in urban centres, and achieving far greater efficiency in energy usage and waste management, are central to the sustainability, health, and environmental outcomes in cities, and to effective climate emission and adaptation actions. Still, another 70 million Southeast Asians will live in cities by 2030.
To negotiate their way through the tensions of becoming overly dependent on China for technology and investment while tackling the increasingly urgent needs presented by urbanisation will be a challenge for the ASEAN members states. On current trends, though, it is likely that Southeast Asia will become dependent primarily on Chinese technology.
That there is a strategic element to China’s growing influence in Southeast Asia elicits a narrow militaristic response from Australia, one that is shaped by hegemonic mental constructions like Indo-Pacific, and where national security is measured by defence spending. Yet, the dynamic that is drawing ASEAN closer to China is unrelated to the Indo-Pacific, and is driven by shared interests.
In future Southeast Asia may at best be neutral, and possibly more closely aligned with China. ASEAN could then be central to China’s ‘vision’.
Mike Scrafton was a Deputy Secretary in the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, senior Defence executive, CEO of a state statutory body, and chief of staff and ministerial adviser to the minister for defence.
Comments
7 responses to “Competition for technological primacy between the great powers will draw in ASEAN”
After 4-5 years of China bashing with the US, I think we have lost the plot. Unless we disengage from the US on their China containment policy, we will be side lined by ASEAN; and if we continued on, we will also lose our South Pacific friends. Finally, we become the lonely continent in the Pacific.
America’s Pacific problem is America.
We need to connect with Asia, Melanesia, Pacific nations. We can’t do anything for America’s problem.
I keep circling back to the two diametrically opposite world views found in the penultimate paragraph.
On the one hand, ASEAN and China are drawing closer together thru their shared interests. They connect. They look outward. They engage.
On the other, Australia measures its national security by how great is its defense spending. It disconnects. It looks inward. It disengages.
No prizes for guessing which approach is the better for positioning in the emerging multipolar, connected world. And we not only pay our politicians for putting us in this position, but guarantee them a generous pension for doing so.
And all the while this painting ourselves into a corner is going on, the U.S. sells its barley to China, and South Africa sells its wine. Nice one, Canberra. Clever!
Covid willing, we can visit a smart city later this year. Designed for 6 million people and built smart from the ground up Xiong’an New Area, south of Beijing, will incorporate all the 21st century technologies currently emerging. Most of its utilities and transportation will be underground while the city itself will be 70% forests and wetland. The planners’ goal is a city that pays for itself by dramatically boosting its citizens’ productivity.
Surely the commies are not capable of such feats. sounds so utopian. Might have to take up travelling again.
thanks.
Hi Chek Ling
There are plenty of videos on Youtube, often from Western expats that live there who provide an insight as to where China is at now with building construction, electronic technologies, and far more. I am frequently amazed by what I see, and the speed at which it takes place. It is nothing but a example of how skilled Chinese people are these days, and how they work collectively and well focused to great effect. Part of that is because very clear plans are made and there is little to stop them being carried out. That is related to the form of governance. Once they commit, you might as well say it is done. The infrastructure advance is stunning. Compare it with the US where infrastructure is falling apart and you can see who is preparing for a far better future which will also encompass green technology.
Unfortunately this is what we frequently miss about the greatness of Chinese people, something that in many instances, has always been there.
Sir, thank you. This is another of your brilliant contributions. I hope Canberra will pay more attention to what you say. I remember that as long ago as the 1970s, the late Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore told the West that the best thing they could do to stem the spread of communism was to trade with the countries in the region to alleviate their poverty. Today, no one would expect that China with its communist roots would be so successful in taking up the challenge posed by Harry Lee. The vista is as ironical as it is intriguing.
This is a wakeup call and a very timely one. Perhaps it is also time to call a spade a spade. The US and its allies’ treatment of the lesser economies of the world has been characterised by four elements (I retain the Chinese habit of enumerating things):
1) Parochialism – they can’t seem to think outside their bubble. The US’s attitude toward the poorer countries seem to reflect their attitude towards their own poorer people. They seem unable and unwilling to empathise.
2) Arrogance – American exceptionalism bordering on bigotry.
3) Patronising attitude – they don’t seem to think that others can and should think for themselves; or even be allowed to. This ties in with their exceptionalism that “We’ll do the thinking. You follow.”
4) Might is right – that power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
If these outmoded attitudes persists, they would continue to bark up the wrong tree; or as the Arabs say, “Dogs may bark but the caravan moves on.”