East Asian countries have long balanced U.S. and Chinese influence, but the two countries’ intensifying rivalry is increasingly pushing them to choose a side.
China’s explosive economic growth over the past few decades has threatened the United States’s long-standing role as the dominant power in East Asia, with China now outcompeting the U.S. in trade in every East Asian country. Despite this, the U.S. still ranks as the region’s No. 1 power, per the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index, through its military, cultural, and human capital capabilities. Washington and Beijing have spent the last several years consolidating their relationships, pushing countries in the region to pick a side in the power struggle that has come to consume geopolitics worldwide.
The chessboard settles
President Donald Trump‘s return to power upended the world order, but 15 months in, the chessboard in East Asia has begun to settle, according to Yun Sun, director of the China Program and co-director of the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center.
“Yes and no,” she answered when asked if the diplomatic competition between China and the U.S. has intensified under Trump’s second term. “I will say that the diplomatic pulling and hauling has de-escalated, in a way, but not entirely. And we’re also seeing countries in the region are more steadfast about the choices that they already made, even before Trump became the president.”
Beijing tried to capitalize on the period of uncertainty that followed Trump’s first few months in office but “failed pretty splendidly,” Sun said.
This failure was due to “arrogance” in Beijing but also “cold calculation.” China attempted to pry longtime U.S. allies South Korea and Japan from the U.S., but its own internal logic sabotaged this.
“The Chinese adopted this view that now the Trump presidency is more unpredictable and uncertain, so China does not need to show as much benevolence for these countries to become closer to China,” Sun explained.
“The Chinese logic is that U.S. support of these allies may not be as solid as before, so as a result, these countries should naturally rebalance their relationship with China and to recalculate their distance between the U.S. and China. They should become closer to China without China having to do anything … and that’s not what happened,” she added.
A 50/50 split
The ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute published its annual report surveying about 2,000 opinion leaders and elites in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations earlier this month, finding a slight majority of 52% preferred China over the U.S. if forced to choose. However, the answers differed by country, putting the five countries into distinctive camps.
When presented with the hypothetical of being forced to choose between the U.S. and China, in the pro-China camp were Indonesia at 80.1%, Malaysia at 68%, Singapore at 66.3%, Timor-Leste at 58.2%, Thailand at 55%, and Brunei at 53.5%. In the pro-U.S. camp were the Philippines at 76.8%, Myanmar at 61.4%, Cambodia at 61%, and Vietnam at 59.2%. Laos was split between the two.
At first glance, it’s difficult to find any pattern among the two camps. Upon closer inspection, Sun argued, geography and history explain the groupings clearly.
“What is surprising here is that we used to think that China had more stronghold in mainland Southeast Asia, because in mainland Southeast Asia they used to be communist countries,” she said, recalling the communist dictatorships in Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. “You would think that mainland Southeast Asia should have a better view of China, but it’s exactly the opposite.”
In contrast, the maritime Southeast Asian countries are much more pro-China. Sun believes this is due to a focus on economic development.
“In maritime Southeast Asia, which traditionally are better developed … more of a higher socio-economic status … what the Chinese are able to do with these countries, especially through Chinese economic engagement with Chinese trade, with Chinese infrastructure development … has bought them a lot of hearts and minds,” she said.
While onlookers might expect the maritime countries to have a bigger interest in cultivating a relationship with the world’s preeminent naval power, they’re instead more focused on trade and economic development.
“The public opinion in maritime Southeast Asia has very different aspirations. In maritime Southeast Asia, they prioritize trade, they prioritize economic development, and the U.S. is really not doing as much as China has. But in mainland Southeast Asia, where China has played the dominant role in the political domain, that has generated a pushback against China,” Sun explained.
This is reflected in the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute survey; the No. 1 threat respondents said could risk turning the perception of China negative was “domestic interference.”
This mainland effect is enacted differently across East Asia. In Cambodia and Myanmar, for instance, China is a major backer of the authoritarian government and military junta, respectively, making it unpopular among the populace. In Vietnam, China is unpopular among both the populace and government over its revanchist foreign policy.
Gaza, ‘Wolf Warrior Diplomacy,’ and a historical foreign policy stretching back hundreds of years factor in
Among the U.S.’s main maritime democratic allies — Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan — all are still firmly in the U.S. camp, helped along by China’s so-called Wolf Warrior Diplomacy. The term, originating from revanchist Chinese action movies, denotes an aggressive, public stance of Chinese diplomats that includes nationalist rhetoric and picking fights with specific lawmakers and statesmen.
On Tuesday, a Japanese research team from Waseda University published a research paper showing that “Wolf Warrior Diplomacy” had a demonstrably negative effect in the three countries, solidifying adherence to their democratic systems and fostering a negative image of China.
“Our results show that ‘Wolf Warrior’ messaging may fail to win public support and can even damage the sender’s reputation. In addition, it highlights that democratic values in East Asia remain resilient, even when exposed to forceful anti-democratic rhetoric,” Professor Tetsuro Kobayashi said in a statement.
On the other hand, the foreign policy behavior of the U.S. had its own casualties in East Asia. U.S. support for Israel in the war in Gaza cratered its popularity in the majority-Muslim countries in Southeast Asia, Sun said. Indonesia, the largest Muslim country on Earth and formerly one of the closest U.S. allies in the region, was the most pro-China country surveyed by ISEAS by a large margin. Malaysia, another Muslim bastion, came in second.
The one major outlier was Thailand, a long-standing U.S. ally, which shifted in position drastically from 2025 to 2026, now favoring China. Sun identified the reason as Thailand’s unique position in history as the only East Asian country to have never been colonized.
“Thailand is the only country … in East Asia that was never colonized, and the reason was that Thai authority has always been very good at balancing different colonial powers against each other, and in the end, earned their independence, if you will, from another colonial power,” she said.
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“The balancing diplomacy has been almost a core of Thai foreign policy for centuries,” Sun added, arguing that its current shift between U.S. and Chinese influence is simply another incarnation of this pattern.
Thai domestic politics and its war with Cambodia may also have had a role, she said.