Asia's annual series of regional summits is rarely calculated to stir the blood. This year, though, the stultifying communiqués conceal a battle for influence between China and the US that could hinder progress on human rights and democracy across much of the region.

The issue is the extent to which the US and its Asian friends can participate directly in multilateral regional institutions. Although there are a lot of these, only two really matter. One is the 10-country Association of South East Asian Nations, which holds annual summits with China, Japan and South Korea, known as Asean + 3, and with those countries plus India, Australia and New Zealand – known as the East Asia Summit. The other is the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation grouping, a looser caucus with 20 countries (plus Hong Kong).

These summits have a meagre record. Asean has delivered some trade liberalisation successes. Apec has produced a useful travel card that helps business people avoid queues at airports. But much of their summitry verges on farce. Burma's military junta, communist Vietnam and Laos, and Brunei, an absolute monarchy, happily signed the democracy and fundamental freedoms clauses of Asean's human rights charter, knowing they could not be enforced.

Greater US engagement could force Asia's democratic laggards to confront such issues. But Washington is in danger of being excluded by Chinese manoeuvring from plans to deepen and widen regional integration.

There are two main options on the table. Japan has proposed turning the East Asia Summit into an East Asia Community. Comparisons with the European Union are overblown; political integration could not happen for decades, if ever. Tokyo has quietly dropped talk of aiming for a currency union. But the Japanese say such a community could co-ordinate monetary and fiscal policy, and establish a free trade area involving two or three billion people, depending on its composition. It could also be a force for progress on human rights. But probably only if backbones were stiffened by a US presence at the summit table.

Yukio Hatoyama, the Japanese prime minister, campaigned hard for his proposal at a series of Asean-related summits last week. Crucially, though, he drew back from proposing that the US should join. Kevin Rudd, the Australian prime minister, suggested an alternative, the Asia Pacific Community, which appears to be based on Apec and would be open to Washington. Leaders who were in the summit hall say that Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, made no counter proposals, contenting himself with agreeing to discuss both the Japanese and Australian plans, while endorsing neither. But diplomats say that China is pushing privately for a community based on the Asean + 3 process, which would exclude democratic India, Australia and New Zealand, as well as the US.

China does not hold all the cards: Asean was founded in 1967 in part as a huddling-together of smaller nations that feared the rise of China. Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore remain friends of the US, even as they come to terms with the local ramifications of China's growth. And Japan is unlikely to countenance an Asian community dominated by China.

Yet Beijing has some advantages. It is China, not the US, which is sucking in imports from elsewhere in Asia, helping the region bounce back. It is China whose economy is growing at 8 per cent. And it is China that is making tens of billions of dollars available for Asean projects such as infrastructure initiatives and the Cheng Mai multilateral swaps agreement. China already has a trade deal with Asean, and a similar one including Japan and South Korea is being discussed. That would provide a foundation for a tightly drawn East Asian Community that China could hope to lead.

The onus is on Washington to act before the idea of a regional community without the US becomes established in Asia. Mr Obama has offered to meet Asean leaders in Singapore next month on the sidelines of the Asia conference – a gesture seen as a long-overdue recognition of South East Asia's significance. The meeting gives Mr Obama a golden opportunity to entrench sufficient support for US participation in Asia's emerging regional architecture to head off China's attempts to exclude it. In the long run, that will count for more than any number of trade initiatives.

The writer is the FT's Asia regional correspondent