TWO regional summits in Asia this week will be remembered not for their outcomes but for Barack Obama’s failure to turn up. They are symbols of regional co-operation, but Mr Obama’s no-show turned them into symbols both of gridlocked politics in Washington and of the difficulties facing Mr Obama’s strategic “pivot” to Asia and the Pacific. The whole world worries about the economic and financial implications of the American government’s shutdown and possible debt default. Much of Asia also worries about its security commitment to the region.

The first summit, in Bali on October 7th and 8th, was for leaders of the 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum. John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, stood in for his boss. APEC, formed in 1989, promotes trade liberalisation (see article). Yet its importance has been whittled away both by the rise of other groupings and by the decision of some members to pursue their own plurilateral trade agreement. This is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), led by America but bringing in Japan and ten other APEC members.

A centrepiece of the Obama administration’s policy for the region, the TPP is intended not just to lower tariffs among its dozen members, but also to tackle issues such as intellectual property, the role of state enterprises, labour conditions and e-commerce. At one point it was supposed to be completed at this summit, where talks were held on the sidelines. The latest target is the end of the year. It is hard to know how realistic this is. Few members are committing themselves in public to the concessions that will be needed. Japanese politicians in Bali did, however, raise hopes (though they created fury at home) that some of their farm tariffs might be put on the table.

Many APEC leaders headed from Bali to the tiny sultanate of Brunei on Borneo for the East Asia Summit on October 10th. This brought together the ten members of ASEAN and eight other regional powers, including America, China, India and Russia. Again, little was expected to come out of the meeting. But it is one of the few forums with the potential to play host to a serious, high-level dialogue over the security tensions that bedevil the region, notably in the East and South China Seas. Many blame the tensions on China’s assertive approach to disputed territorial claims. They look to America for reassurance.

A senior Asian politician describes Mr Obama’s no-show at the two summits as “stark raving mad”. Yet Mr Kerry tried to dismiss it, and his earlier cancellation of trips to Malaysia and the Philippines, as the result of no more than “a moment in politics”. America remains the pre-eminent military power and the world’s biggest economy, as well as the security guarantor of choice for most of the region. Irritation with Mr Obama may fade—though perhaps rather slowly for both Indonesia’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, stood up for the third time, and Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, fighting a lonely battle at home for the TPP. America’s humiliation at being lectured by China to “ensure the safety” of its investments may also pass, if default is averted.

Even so, it was hard not to see the week as an episode in a long-running drama of relative American decline in the Asia-Pacific region as China rises. While Mr Obama was trapped in Washington, China’s Communist Party leader, Xi Jinping, was at the APEC summit, and took in visits to Malaysia and Indonesia. His serene passage, oozing personal authority and commercial clout at every stop, might have been designed to make America look bad. In Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, he surprised even some of his own officials by announcing a proposed “Asian Infrastructure Bank”, open to participation by all Asian governments.

The details are sketchy, but the bank is an attempt to meet what Rajat Nag of the Asian Development Bank calls “a very real need”. The ADB says Asia must invest $8 trillion in infrastructure between 2010 and 2020 if it is to keep growing fast. So Mr Xi came to the region with a partial answer to one of the questions it was asking. Mr Obama could not even bring himself. American protestations of its long-term commitment to the region sound perfectly plausible. With China, the question does not even arise. It is not going anywhere.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Xi Jinping attended the ASEAN-East Asian Summit in Brunei, as well as the APEC summit. Mr Xi did not go to Brunei; Li Keqiang went instead. This was corrected online on October 28th 2013.