Wary of China’s rise, Pompeo announces US initiatives
Like so many of our Asian allies and friends, our country fought for its own independence from an empire that expected deference. Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced US$113 million in new technology, energy and infrastructure initiatives in emerging Asia at a time when China is pouring billions of dollars in investments into the region.
Amid increased US trade frictions with China, Pompeo’s announcement sought to build on President Donald Trump’s ‘IndoPacific’ strategy that aims to cast the United States as a trustworthy partner in the region.
Pompeo said the United States was seeking a ‘free and open’ Asia without domination by any one country, in what appeared to be a reference to China’s growing economic clout and heightened tensions in the disputed South China Sea.
“Like so many of our Asian allies and friends, our country fought for its own independence from an empire that expected deference,” Pompeo told the US Chamber of Commerce business group.
“We thus have never and will never seek domination in the Indo-Pacific, and we will oppose any country that does.”
“These funds represent just a down payment on a new era in US economic commitment to peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo said he would visit Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia this week, where he planned to announce new security assistance.
A senior US official said the American investments were not aimed at countering China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which involves dozens of countries in an estimated US$1 trillion of mostly state-led infrastructure projects linking Asia, parts of Africa and Europe.
Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University trade professor and former head of the IMF’s China division, said the US initiatives were small in comparison to Chinese investments.
“In both scale and scope, these initiatives pale in ambition relative to comparable initiatives by China,” Prasad said. “It also highlights the distinction between China’s approach of bold and grand government-led initiatives and the much more modest role of the US government.
Countries in the region have been worried by Trump’s ‘America first’ policy, withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal and pursuit of a trade conflict with China that threatens to disrupt regional supply chains.
The United States first outlined its strategy to develop the IndoPacific economy at an Asia-Pacific summit last year.
‘Indo-Pacific,’ defined by Pompeo as a region stretching from the US West Coast to India’s west coast, has become known in diplomatic circles as shorthand for a broader and democratic-led region in place of ‘Asia-Pacific,’ which from some perspectives had authoritarian China too firmly at its center.
Among the new investments outlined by Pompeo, the United States will invest US$25 million to expand US technology exports to the region, add nearly US$50 million this year to help countries produce and store their energy resources and create a new assistance network to boost infrastructure development.
Pompeo said the United States has signed a US$350 million investment compact with Mongolia to develop new sources of water supply. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a development agency of the US government, was also finalizing an agreement to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in transportation and other reforms in Sri Lanka, Pompeo said.
Speaking at the same event, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the United States has eased export controls for high-technology product sales to India.
Ray Washburne, president of the US government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation, also said the agency has US$4 billion invested in the region and hopes to double that figure “in the next few years.”
Speaking to reporters before Pompeo’s speech, Brian Hook, senior policy adviser to Pompeo, said the United States was not competing with China’s mostly state-led initiatives. — Reuters