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Asean countries warned against exploiting US-China tensions for short-term gain

A prominent Chinese political scientist has cautioned Southeast Asian countries against leveraging China-US tensions for short-term benefits, saying this strategy could backfire.
Speaking on the sidelines…

By Samantha Johnson / March 28, 2026
A prominent Chinese political scientist has cautioned Southeast Asian countries against leveraging China-US tensions for short-term benefits, saying this strategy could backfire.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia on Friday, Zheng Yongnian, dean of the school of public policy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, said that in the context of South China Sea sovereignty disputes, the key challenge lay in how countries interpreted the China-US rivalry.
“Many countries believe that China and the US are inevitably heading towards confrontation, perhaps even a direct conflict, so they try to leverage the tensions between China and the US for their own benefit,” he said.

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“I think this is understandable. However, this approach certainly has its limits – if it exceeds those limits, the country itself will inevitably become a victim.”

Zheng said that nations in the region “should not assume that the US will back them or that they can leverage China-US tensions to advance their own interests”.

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Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) face a precarious balancing act between the US and China, the bloc’s largest trading partner. Meanwhile, both Beijing and Washington have ramped up their naval presence in the South China Sea over the past years.

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