As the Trump administration freezes funding to Southeast Asian initiatives, Beijing is stepping in to fill the void

Benedict Rogers for UCA News

Last month, within days of his inauguration, US President Donald Trump announced a 90-day freeze on foreign aid, and the U.S. State Department issued a “stop-work” order to all recipients of U.S. foreign assistance.

The dramatic measure threatens to have devastating consequences for millions of people around the world — especially those most vulnerable to poverty or displacement as a result of war or persecution — and those who defend basic human rights on the frontlines of the fight for freedom.

The United States is the world’s biggest international aid donor, spending $68 billion USD in 2023. The State Department notice appears to impact everything, from development assistance to humanitarian aid to civil society support and military aid.

A new administration is perfectly entitled to review its spending priorities. Given the size of U.S. aid spending, it is certainly within the new president’s rights to review how those funds are used.

It is also valid to argue that the rest of the world should reduce its dependency on the generosity of a single country — the United States.

The wealthy, developed, and free world should share the burden of caring for the world’s most vulnerable, and defending our values of freedom, together.

The European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and wealthy democracies in Asia — Japan and Korea for example — should do more.

And long-term, there may be good reasons to re-order the aid budget — to root out corruption, to end the funding of politically-motivated, ideological agendas that don’t serve the needs of the poor or the interests of the U.S., and to ensure that taxpayers’ dollars are well-spent.

There is also a legitimate debate to be had about the balance between aid and trade in helping to lift people out of poverty.

There is the old adage — “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”. There is much to be said for investing funds in skills development and enterprise.

And yet, there are emergencies around the world where people in dire need were dependent on U.S. aid for their very survival — and now have had their very legs cut out from under them and their lives literally jeopardized.

And there are struggles for freedom which it is both consistent with the values of — and in the interests of — the free world to support.

It is in no one’s interests — except those of repressive, authoritarian dictatorships — to see brave human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, religious freedom champions and dissidents cut off from funding and thrown to the wolves.

In Myanmar, where famine looms and the U.S. is the single largest aid donor, one humanitarian worker described the situation as “mayhem.”

This week, it was reported that a 71-year-old woman, a refugee in a displacement camp along the Thailand-Myanmar border, died after she was discharged from a U.S.-funded healthcare facility and her oxygen supply was cut off.

Last November, as I wrote in this column, the United Nations warned of a “perfect storm brewing” which could result in a famine in Rakhine State in which two million people are at risk of starvation.

Without urgent action, nearly the entire population will, according to the U.N., “regress into survival mode”. They are facing “total economic collapse”.

That humanitarian crisis in one region of Myanmar is now compounded throughout the country as a result of the US aid freeze.

Refugees on the Thailand-Myanmar border are now even more vulnerable than ever, with sick children unable to access a doctor and the basic human rights of already extremely vulnerable people now facing an existential crisis.

At least 3.4 million people in Myanmar are displaced as a result of the military regime’s offensives, and the real figure is likely to be even higher. Around 40% of them are children. All are impacted by the U.S. aid freeze.

Elsewhere, many groups championing human rights in Hong Kong, for example, are suddenly faced with having to pause their work. So too are those who campaign for the Uyghurs or Tibet or human rights in China.

This all leads to real concerns that the U.S. freeze on aid will only benefit China, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region but also in Africa and Latin America, where China has already established a foothold to fill a vacuum.

The benefits to Beijing are two-fold.

As the Trump administration freezes funding to Southeast Asian initiatives, Beijing is already increasing its support. And that will be a clear setback, both for lives on the line and for the defense of human rights.

It reduces US soft power and increases China’s influence and the growth of its power, hard and soft. And as the U.S. freezes funding to civil society groups, media freedom initiatives, religious freedom projects, human rights defenders and pro-democracy movements, it undercuts the ability of the US — and the free world — to champion and defend the values on which our civilization has been built, emboldening repressive, tyrannical, authoritarian regimes and leaving those brave activists across Asia and the world, who champion freedom in their own countries, extremely exposed and vulnerable.

It is a grave foreign policy mistake which cannot be in the interests of the United States or the free world, and must be rapidly reversed.

The 90-day freeze was unnecessary, thoughtless, heartless and profoundly dangerous. A legitimate and much-needed review into corruption or spending priorities could have been conducted without plunging millions of vulnerable people into jeopardy and undermining the fundamental values of the free world.

I hope that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who has a long, distinguished and admirable track record of championing human rights and freedom for many of the world’s most persecuted people — will find a way, as the ‘acting director’ of USAID, to restore funding to those most in need urgently, to review and reform the U.S. aid budget quickly to ensure that funds are well deployed and well spent, and to ensure that the United States returns to being the world’s champion of freedom and human rights and the most generous donor to the world’s most vulnerable people, while rooting out corruption, eliminating misuse of funds and focusing USAID on those who need it most: those who depend on aid for survival, and those who deserve our funding for their tireless and courageous defense of freedom.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.