The US-initiated meeting with Southeast Asian leaders, which kicks off Monday in California's Sunnylands resort, is likely to shine a harsh spotlight on China, experts have said.

Some analysts have predicted that US President Barrack Obama is likely to seek a consensus on the necessity of preserving freedom of navigation in the South China Sea during the summit -- an implied rebuke of China's aggressive claims over the busy waterway.

Like Us on Facebook

"This is a critically important principle, particularly in the South China Sea," said White House press secretary Josh Earnest recently, adding that a considerable volume of global trade flows through the territory. "Ensuring the free flow of this commerce and that freedom of navigation is critically important to the global economy."

"Recalibrated Calculus"

Obama has used Sunnylands -- a lush, breezy retreat in Rancho Mirage, California -- as a venue for a high-level meeting once before.  He hosted China's President Xi Jinping there three years ago.  Monday's summit, however, is likely to vex Beijing.

In the past months, the US has re-doubled its efforts to throw a monkey wrench into the Chinese government's ambitions in the South China Sea, building alliances and flouting Beijing's claims of authority over the busy waterway with its nagging freedom of navigation operations.

Japan and the Philippines -- each with its own agenda -- have indicated some interest in joining US naval operations in the disputed waters, a fact that has elicited sharp criticism from Chinese foreign ministry officials.

Australia -- a staunch US ally -- and Vietnam have expressed their support for the US naval patrols, and Canberra has announced plans to conduct its own freedom of navigation operations in the territory.

Experts nonetheless say that -- beyond the bristling naval hardware and pointed rhetoric -- the principle of freedom of navigation is a vital component in a very real US struggle for political and economic influence in the Asia Pacific region.  Experts have predicted that Obama will be on the offensive during the summit.

"The ultimate aim of US strategy towards the South China Sea is to enhance America's leadership and increase the costs to China of its maritime assertiveness, leading to a recalibration of Beijing's strategic calculus," says Asia policy expert Richard Javad Heydarian in a report for the CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI).

"Commercial Olympics"

Heydarian points out that -- ahead of the summit -- Washington had already signed the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation; increased cooperation with Vietnam; expanded multilateral engagement with a gradually liberalizing Myanmar; and appointed the first permanent mission by an outside country to ASEAN, among others.

Some analysts say that Obama is also likely to push for more robust trade and investment ties in the region, particularly under the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact.

China has been the ASEAN's largest trading partner since 2009, with its bilateral trade with member countries surpassing $366 billion in 2014.  However, the US strategy has focused on direct investment, where it is ahead of China. 

"There may be a better term for it than 'cold war'," Stuart Dean, a retired executive from General Electric, who spent 24 years in Southeast Asia, told the New York Times. "It's a commercial Olympics, as it were."

American companies quietly poured some $32.3 billion into Southeast Asia from 2012 to 2014, according to ASEAN data quoted by the New York Times. 

China plunked down some $21.3 billion in direct investments in the region during the same timeframe.

"I think the strategy of the Obama administration has been a long-term one which reflects a whole vision of Asia and realizes ASEAN is a critical piece of the puzzle," says Alexander Feldman, CEO of the US-ASEAN Business Council. "Since Day 1 they have focused on this region and understood that it was really the battleground for the future of Asia."

TagsUS-China relations, China-ASEAN, Territorial disputes in the South China Sea