Rivalry looming over summit

U.s.-china tensions in disputed sea among tests for ASEAN

LABUAN BAJO, Indonesia — Alarm over Myanmar’s still-unfolding civil strife, including an armed attack on an aid convoy, and China’s aggressive actions in the disputed South China Sea are expected to challenge Southeast Asian leaders’ commitments to noninterference and consensus decision-making as they meet in Indonesia this week.

Top diplomats of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations convened Tuesday in the resort town of Labuan Bajo to finalize the agenda ahead of the two-day summit of the 10-nation bloc’s heads of state.

The United States and China are not part of the twice-yearly summit, but their rivalry looms large over the high-profile Asian gathering. Beijing has warned that U.S. efforts to strengthen security alliances and intensify combat-readiness drills with Asian allies would endanger regional stability.

Founded during the Cold War in 1967, ASEAN has avoided getting entangled in major-power competition as a bloc. But its members are often involved in partnerships and disputes with superpowers. They range from authoritarian Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, which are aligned with Beijing, to liberal democracies such as the Philippines, which is Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia and recently allowed an expansion of U.S. military presence in the country.

The other members — Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — have economic and security engagements with both the U.S. and China.

“ASEAN wants to remain open, to cooperate with anyone,” said Indonesian President Joko Widodo, this year’s ASEAN chair.

“We also don’t want ASEAN to be anyone’s proxy.”