Rubio set for Asia meetings as Trump-Xi summit preparations come into focus

MANILA: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is due in Manila this weekend for a series of Asia-Pacific meetings where he is widely expected to hold talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi ahead of a possible summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in September.

The US State Department said Rubio will leave for Manila on Sunday to attend the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference, the East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers' Meeting and the ASEAN Regional Forum Foreign Ministers' Meeting. He will also meet senior government officials from Indo-Pacific countries during the trip, which is scheduled to run until next Thursday.

In a statement, the department said: "The Secretary's visit advances a clear US priority: a free and open Indo-Pacific that delivers safety, security, and prosperity for the region and for the American people" adding that Rubio would also use the visit to strengthen the US partnership with the Philippines.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is also expected in Manila next week for meetings involving the 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, alongside Wang Yi and ministers from Japan, Australia, Canada and Britain. The gatherings are taking place during a period of wider global instability, with the war involving Iran disrupting trade flows and adding to economic pressure across Asia.

Possible US-China talks

Washington and Beijing have not officially confirmed a meeting between Rubio and Wang on the sidelines of the forum, though such an encounter is broadly anticipated and the two sides have previously met during similar gatherings. Analysts expect any discussion to centre on preparations for a second Trump-Xi summit this year after their last meeting in May.

Trump has said Xi will travel to the United States at the end of September. Strained relations between the US and China have steadied under a temporary trade truce reached by Trump and Xi in October, although major disagreements continue to shape the relationship and many analysts see the two powers locked in a new type of Cold War.

Regional flashpoints

The Manila meetings are also expected to cover the South China Sea, where several countries in the region have overlapping territorial claims. They are being held soon after the 10th anniversary of the 2016 arbitral ruling that rejected the legal basis of China’s broad claims in the waterway, a decision Beijing does not accept.

Philippine Foreign Affairs spokesperson Dominic Xavier Imperial said ASEAN and China remained committed to negotiating a substantive and effective code of conduct for the South China Sea, and expressed confidence that progress could be made this year.

Myanmar is also likely to feature in discussions after ASEAN foreign ministers last week held informal talks with Myanmar's foreign minister, marking the first face-to-face meeting of that kind since the 2021 coup that led the bloc to bar the country's leaders from its meetings.

Harrison Pretat, a maritime security expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Rubio was likely to restate US criticism of Chinese actions in the South China Sea, but in a restrained manner because of the Trump administration's wider priorities with Beijing. He said: "He will also not want that to completely derail his talks with Wang Yi" and added, "so I would expect a calibrated approach rather than an attempt to really hammer Beijing. I think China will likewise want to state their position and move on to other things — but there is always room to be surprised."

Another CSIS expert on Southeast Asia, Andreyka Natalegawa, said one likely topic would be scam centres in Southeast Asia, which the Trump administration says are costing Americans billions of dollars each year.