Editorial: U.S.-Asia ties counter China’s dominance

President Barack Obama this week not-so-subtly goaded the Chinese, who are not the foreign policy partner their trade relationship with the United States ought to suggest.

First, he agreed to position 2,500 U.S. Marines in Australia, which also has significant trade ties with China. Second, he said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit Myanmar to recognize that country’s emerging democracy.

Neither move will please the Chinese, who have become progressively more assertive regarding alleged rights to broad swaths of offshore waters that encompass potentially rich oil and mineral deposits, as well as fishing rights. In the last year, China and Japan have clashed over ownership of a key island group in the East China Sea. Another island group has become a flashpoint between China and the Philippines. The Chinese, in fact, consider the whole of the South China Sea their pond, a remarkable reach across thousands of square miles outside internationally recognized 200-mile territorial limits.

The prize is potential reserves of oil estimated at more than 200 billion barrels, equivalent to about 80 percent the reserves of Saudi Arabia. The Chinese are interfering with efforts by other nations to pinpoint likely well sites. For example, they cut the cables of Vietnamese vessels conducting subsurface seismic surveys.

A decade ago, remember, they also briefly detained the crew of a U.S. spy plane damaged in a collision near Hainan Island, Chinese territory near Vietnam. The pilot of the Chinese plane involved in the accident died. The incident was defused without further acrimony.

But sending in the Marines – and Clinton – will bolster this week’s pledge by the president that the United States will remain a force in Pacific affairs. In the last decade, while China has increased its economic and military might, the U.S. has been consumed by its military and diplomatic efforts in the Mideast. As the nation extricates itself as best it can from Iraq and Afghanistan – and a potential clash with Iran notwithstanding – the U.S. should have more resources to commit to a region already becoming the world’s 21st century economic hub.

The U.S. will have the benefit of a reservoir of good will that stretches back to the 19th century, despite a sometimes ugly occupation of the Philippines and wars with Japan and Vietnam. And without the U.S., the region will have little as a counterweight to China and its ambitions.

The ongoing turnabout in Burmese affairs illustrates the possibilities.

The nation was ruled by a military regime that brutally suppressed dissent. Now, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who was confined to her home for years, has announced her party will participate in upcoming elections. In September, the government canceled a massive dam-building project undertaken with Chinese assistance.

A picture of Clinton and Suu Kyi side by side would be a tremendous affirmation of democracy’s power, and a message the U.S. will indeed have a long-term presence in Asia.