When a Bruneian businessman told me earlier this year that China UnionPay is the only bank card that can challenge the dominance of Visa and MasterCard, headquartered in the United States, I agreed, but assumed the time that would happen to be far in the future.

But on my way to Brunei on Wednesday for the upcoming ASEAN and East Asia summits, all three newspapers I randomly grabbed on the aircraft - two from Malaysia and one from Brunei, told similar stories that bolstered my confidence in the businessman's judgment.

They were that US President Barack Obama's cancellation of his Southeast Asia tour underscored a "diminished superpower", while consecutive trips by Chinese leaders to the same region highlighted a committed neighbor despite patchy global recovery and volatility in financial markets.