Southeast Asia China Research Articles

Resources for China-ASEAN Relations: China-Asean Relations, May 2013 to August 2013: Chronology of Events

CHINA-ASEAN RELATIONS, MAY 2013 TO AUGUST 2013: CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS MAY 2013 30th April-5th May China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi pays official visits to Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei. Wang's choice of Southeast Asia as his first overseas destination since his appointment signals Beijing's renewed desire for closer ties with its neighbours. 2nd China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with ASEAN Secretary- General Le Luong Minh in Jarkata, Indonesia. Wang says China's new government will continue to encourage ASEAN to develop and grow stronger, firmly support ASEAN in its construction of the ASEAN Community and integration process, and firmly support ASEAN in continuing to play a leading role in regional cooperation. 6th-8th Senior officials from China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) meet in Yangon, Myanmar to discuss drug control. A ministerial meeting is also held in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar. Deputy Police Chief Zaw Win is elected as chairman of the Mekong Region's Transborder Drug Elimination Team. 6th-9th Chinese Defence Minister Chang Wanquan pays a four-day official visit to Brunei and attends the 7th ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting (ADMM). The purpose of this visit is to further promote China-Brunei defence exchanges and coopera- tion and to further expand consensus in the security field with ASEAN countries in a bid to jointly maintain regional peace and stability. 9th-14th China and 15 Asia-Pacific nations start the first round of talks to create one of the world's largest trading blocs, namely, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The RCEP has been regarded as a rival pact to the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade initiative involving a dozen countries but excluding China. 28th May-3rd June Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam visits Beijing and Shanghai. He meets China's Politburo Standing Committee member and Executive Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli and Minister of Finance Lou Jiwei. Tharman also jointly officiates the opening of the Monetary Authority of Singapore Repre-sentative Office in Beijing with the People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan. JUNE 2013 3rd-4th The China-Southeast Asia High-Level People-to-People Dialogue Conference convenes in Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The conference, themed Boosting Development through a Peace Deal and Achieving Positive Out- comes through Cooperation, aims to address issues of common concern in China and Southeast Asia, and push for strengthened cooperation among the countries. 19th-21st Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang visits China. This is his first-ever visit made as head of state and the first state-level visit by a high-ranking Vietnamese leader to China since its change of leadership. …

Going out: China's food security from Southeast Asia

China's new five-year plan recognised the looming insecurity in its agricultural sector. On the one hand, the country faces a diminishing arable land supply; on the other, a large population with rapidly increasing diets. Although large-scale trade and investment in this sector has been developing since the mid 1990s between China and a variety of African states, it is a relatively new addition to the more established China-Southeast Asian economic relationship. This article seeks to explore the impact that China's agricultural investments are having on two Southeast Asian countries – Indonesia and the Philippines – where there has been a marked increase in activities by Chinese firms in agricultural produce. The findings from these two case studies – and a series of smaller studies of the situation in other regional states – are used as a benchmark to clarify some of the consequences of China's agricultural investment from Southeast Asia for regional food security.

Local Liberalism: China's provincial approaches to relations with Southeast Asia

One of the most interesting phenomena in contemporary international relations is the growing role of local government entities in forging and intensifying cross-border interactions in the social, economic and cultural arenas. Lamentably, this aspect of international relations, which I conceptualize as local liberalism, has not received sufficient scholarly attention. This paper attempts to fill in the gap by describing and analyzing how local liberalism has played a role in China's relations with Southeast Asia. The paper argues that local governments in Yunnan and Guangxi have played an important and positive role in cementing the relations between China and Southeast Asia. The paper suggests that debunking the China ‘black box’ to examine the different units in China, including the sub-national governments, may provide more useful insights for our understanding of China–Southeast Asian relations.

Complete mitochondrial genome sequence of Nectogale elegans

The elegant water shrew (Nectogale elegans) belongs to the family Soricidae, and distributes in northern South Asia, central and southern China and northern Southeast Asia. In this study, the complete mitochondrial genome of N. elegans was sequenced. It was determined to be 17,460 bases, and included 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 tRNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes and one non-coding region, which is similar to other mammalian mitochondrial genomes. Bayesian inference and maximum likelihood methods were used to construct phylogenetic trees based on 12 heavy-strand concatenated PCGs. Phylogenetic analyses further confirmed that Crocidurinae diverged prior to Soricinae, and Sorex unguiculatus differentiated earlier than N. elegans.

China in Southeast Asia: The Search for a Chinese Model of International Relations

Despite China’s claims of a foreign policy of ‘peaceful rise’/‘peaceful development’ and of seeking a ‘harmonious world’, and despite its economic openness and active participation in economic multilateralism, China’s neighbours continue to be concerned about the overall direction and intent of Beijing’s security policies. These concerns are particularly heightened by China’s rapid military modernization of the past couple of decades. The announcement in 2010 that China considered its territorial claims in the South China Sea a ‘core interest’, can be seen as a setback to its regional diplomacy, so diligently crafted over the years and drove its Southeast Asian neighbours to seek closer engagement with the US. This article argues that the contradictions evident in China’s neighbourhood foreign policy reflect its continuing search for a model of international relations that can balance its domestic interests such as the need for political stability, including regime stability, on the one hand and its external ambitions for a decisive role in regional affairs, on the other.

Introduction: Evolving Complexities of Southeast Asia–China Relations

Introduction: Evolving Complexities of Southeast Asia–China Relations

The Aśokan Revivalism of Emperor Wudi in Liang China and Ancient Southeast Asia

The Aśokan Revivalism of Emperor Wudi in Liang China and Ancient Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia. Strange parallels: Southeast Asia in global context, c. 800–1830, vol. 2. By Victor Lieberman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 947. Maps, Notes, Bibliography, Index.

Strange parallels: Southeast Asia in global context, c. 800-1830, vol. 2 By VICTOR LIEBERMAN New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 947. Maps, Notes, Bibliography, Index. This is a giant work in many senses of the word. Physically, it is gigantic. At close to 1000 pages, reading the book is like going on a long journey with its share of hardships and rewards. In terms of ambition, it wants to retell the history of the evolution of the modern world over a millennium. As a work of scholarship, aside from Victor Lieberman's important primary work on the empires of mainland Southeast Asia, it packs in the equivalent of secondary readings from at least six masters programmes in the regional histories of China, India, Japan, Russia, France and island Southeast Asia. The equally vast strengths of the book lie in its impeccable scholarship, the author's indefatigable capacity to carefully synthesise research and debates within each field, and to draw comparisons and contrasts between these regions. The argument is, however, not easy to summarise. It is not in the mode of historical sociology where the materials are organised around the argument. Rather it is a vast comparative history which presents the longue duree of eight regions of the world, more or less. Nor does it have an easily identifiable narrative. Rather, the fruits of this work emerge from the integration of ah older narrative with a comparative methodology that yields new subnarratives of considerable interest. Lieberman's goal remains in large part to understand the distinctiveness of the modern state and society. As such it remains within the Enlightenment-modernisation narrative. His selections are not shaped by Marxist-subaltern goals of conflict and resistance, nor by the telos of a postnational cosmopolitanism, and nor even by the search for alternative modernities--although it would not be incompatible with the last. Thus, his attitude is quite different from, say, Charles Tilly's pioneering work on state-formation in Europe (The formation of national states in Western Europe, 1975), which attends equally to the violence and costs of state-making. Indeed, on occasion Lieberman reveals quite an admiring attitude towards the goals of the territorially centralising state, declaring that the Chinese state developed 'superb homogenising techniques' (p. 534). Ostensibly, Lieberman seeks to explain the 'strange parallels' between different regions of Eurasia over his period of inquiry, 800-1830 CE. The work distinguishes two types of historical states in this region, namely, those in the 'protected zone' and those in the 'exposed zone'. Geographically, the latter include South Asia and China, which have large northern and northwestern areas exposed to Inner Asian invasions, whereas the former zone includes kingdoms in Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia, France and Japan which are relatively protected from direct massive predation. Maritime or island Southeast Asia belatedly developed into an exposed zone, exposed to the 'white Inner Asians' takeover from the sixteenth century. Historically, the two zones are separated by the presence in China and India of precocious civilisations from which the protected kingdoms later crafted their own 'charter kingdoms' towards the latter part of the first millennium. In Frankish/Camlingian France, the charter state derived its ideas from the Roman empire, whereas Kiev derived its ideas from the Byzantine empire. Lieberman sees two patterns over the millennium. The charter states in the protected zone facilitated a cycle of agrarian and population expansion, commercial growth, and development of new literate elites and charter religious ideologies of integration--in short an early form of agrarian state-building. This pattern was also experienced in China and India, although in these cases, new techniques and cultures of state-formation derived from Inner Asian invasions--such as by the Khitan, Jurchen, Tangut, Turks--combined with the older civilisational forms to create (ironically perhaps) more hybrid forms than the civilisational purity claimed, for instance, by Confucian and Hindu-Buddhist states in the protected zones. …

The Arab Spring: Challenges, Obstacles and Dilemmas

On the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union, long-standing authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen have fallen, Libya is in the fi nal stages of a civil war that toppled the forty-year rule of Muammar Gaddafi , and the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria may be tottering on the brink of implosion. Through 2011, demonstrations in Bahrain and Iran have been met with force, while Morocco, Jordan, Djibouti, Iraq, Oman, and Algeria have all reported protests. The Arab Spring has not been confi ned to the Middle East and North Africa; rather, its effects have gone global, with analysts drawing attention to its ripples, ramifi cations, and the potential of “revolutionary contagion” through the greater Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Russia and Eurasia, as well as China and East and South East Asia. Although there is broad agreement among experts and commentators who have studied the Arab Spring itself as to the scale and importance of revolutionary change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, its causes are contested, and there is little consensus as to its likely consequences and strategic effects. As Prince Hassan of Jordan noted, “The outcome of this tectonic realignment is not just unpredictable, but unknowable.” Nevertheless, we can contend that the Arab Spring is in the process of challenging many of the attitudes, values, norms, and interests that have underpinned Russian, Eurasian, U.S. and European strategic approaches to the MENA region. These transformational events have forced fundamental questions concerning the basic tenets of international relations to the fore. How stable are authoritarian regimes, how brittle and fragile? What are the limits of humanitarian intervention? Is the set of assumptions that have governed Western strategy towards the MENA region—the balance between strategic interests, norms, and values—still relevant, or should some recalibration take place? This essay will attempt to answer some of these questions.

Linking an Asian Transnational Commerce in Tea: Overseas Chinese Merchants in the Fujian–Singapore Trade, 1920–1960 (review)

Reviewed by: Linking an Asian Transnational Commerce in Tea: Overseas Chinese Merchants in the Fujian–Singapore Trade, 1920–1960 Wu Xiao An Linking an Asian Transnational Commerce in Tea: Overseas Chinese Merchants in the Fujian–Singapore Trade, 1920–1960 Jason Lim Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010. 252 pp., biblio., index, ISBN 978-900-41-8243-1, US$154 This is an ambitious book but it reflects admirable research. Touching upon so many important themes and multi-disciplinary concerns, it is set against the background of two interrelated clusters of scholarship on the Chinese tea trade: the Sino–British trade and the Overseas Chinese merchants (mainly the major magnates). The book is focused specifically on Fujian–Singapore Chinese tea merchants, a merchant community of importers and exporters who were situated in between the major magnates and the marginalized working class. It looks into: firstly, how tea was produced in Fujian and then sold in Singapore; secondly, how tea merchants were organized; and thirdly, how the tea merchant community adjusted to the changing political and economic situation in China and Singapore. Research on the historical background of the period 1920–60 reveals three series of major events: i) war and revolution, colonial transformation, decolonization, nation-building and the Cold War; ii) a high rate of Chinese migration to Nanyang in the 1920s, the near termination of Sino–Southeast Asian interactions in the 1960s, and the change of emigrant Chinese identity from 'Overseas Chinese' to 'Chinese Overseas'; and iii) the decline of Chinese tea trade exports as a result of international competition, especially from India and Ceylon, and the adverse domestic political circumstances in China and Singapore. The Fujian–Singapore transnational commerce was in the hands of a specific Anxi tea merchant community. This is illustrated through case studies of Fujian tea production, of Singapore tea merchants and organizations, and of government trade policies and Chinese merchants' adaptation strategies. The book touches on various fashionable scholarly areas—commodity history, transnational linkage, Cold War history and overseas Chinese studies. It attempts a thematic examination of the Fujian–Singapore tea trade in the 1920–60 period. Nevertheless, 'the intention behind the book is to look into the political side of the Fujian–Singapore tea trade through the overseas Chinese merchants in Singapore' (see p. 189). Part I of the book includes Chapters 1 and 2, looking at issues concerning Chinese migration to Singapore and tea production in Fujian. Part II moves to Singapore and deals with the tea merchant community, their trade associations and general environments surrounding them. Part III discusses the political aspect of the tea trade by focusing on the government policy changes (especially of the national government and the Fujian provincial government in China) and the responses of the Chinese tea merchants in Singapore. The main argument is [End Page 112] that in the framework of Fujian–Singapore trans-regional tea trade linkage, from 1920 to the mid-1950s, Xiamen functioned as the nexus, and Fujian tea production was a major concern for Singapore merchants; while from the mid-1950s onwards, the centre shifted to Singapore as family tea businesses gave way to state enterprises. The role and identity of tea merchants also shifted from the 'Overseas Chinese' to the 'Chinese Overseas' and the dependence on Fujian tea shifted to Taiwan tea due to the Cold War and nation-building. Two outstanding perspectives deserve the reader's special attention. Firstly, the qiaoxiao (overseas Chinese trade) perspective: by contrasting the categories of Indian and Ceylon tea against Guangdong tea and Taiwan tea the study highlights the Fujian–Singapore tea trade. It is, more importantly, discussed as one specific niche of qiaoxiao in relation to the categories of neixiao (domestic trade) and waixiao (external trade) in China. Secondly, the Taiwan perspective: unlike most studies of China–Southeast Asian interactions which pay little attention to the Taiwan sector, Lim's study perfectly balances Fujian–Singapore trans-regional tea trade by incorporating the Taiwan sector. Yet, several obvious points of unequal emphasis also occur throughout the book: China over Singapore, production over commerce, trade associations over business networks, Tieguanyin brand tea over Wuyishuixian brand tea, postwar period over pre-war period, and second-hand sources over archival...

The United States and China in Southeast Asia: Conflict or Convergence?

The year 2009 witnessed important initiatives by the United States and China in Southeast Asia. Evidence of some sharpening of Sino-American competition to protect interests and project influence in Southeast Asia grew amid a broader pattern of mixed divergence and convergence in Sino-American relations over such important international concerns as the global economic crisis and recession begun in 2008, climate change, the armed conflicts, instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Iran's and North Korea's nuclear weapons development. On balance, the leaders of both countries remained committed to a path of constructive engagement that has marked Sino-American interchange since early in the decade. Differences over various issues, including respective efforts to improve influence and protect interests in Southeast Asia, have tended to be dealt with through various private channels or formal dialogues, out of the public limelight. Neither side has taken steps in their respective foreign policy initiatives that would seriously jeopardize the positive stasis that has developed in relations between the American and Chinese governments. Many significant differences and strongly competing interests remain in U.S.-China relations, including in Southeast Asia. They feed deeply rooted mutual suspicions and impede progress in developing closer U.S.-China relations based on mutual trust. But the positive benefits of Sino-American engagement, ever closer mutual interdependence in U.S.-Chinese interests, especially in economic development, and massive preoccupations of both leaderships with other problems at

Ryukyu in the Ming Reign Annals 1380s-1580s

Through an examination and analysis of references to the Ryukyuan polities as contained in the Ming shi-lu (Ming reign annals), this study explores the emergence of a unified Ryukyu state by the 1430s, and its relationship with the Ming empire and Southeast Asian trade ports. It also assesses the importance of the formal Ming tribute system for Ryukyu’s political consolidation, and examines both the development of Ryukyu’s maritime trade and regional influence and the decline of this role as a result of the Ming formally licensing trading ships to trade directly between China and Southeast Asian ports in the 1570s, and the invasion of the Ryukyuan islands by troops of the daimyō Shimazu in 1609. The study also examines the degree to which, over the period from the mid-14th century to the mid-16th century, Ryukyu can be seen to have been part of a Northeast Asian “Age of Commerce.” In Ryukyu, we do see that, during the late 14th century, Naha emerged as a commercial hub - as an entrepot port - serving the booming commerce of the period, including the Southeast Asia-China trade in aromatics which marked Southeast Asian ports, but many of the other characteristics of the Age of Commerce in Southeast Asia were not seen during Ryukyu’s efflorescence. The article concludes with an English translation of the Ryukyuan references contained in the Ming shi-lu from the 1370s to the 1430s.

The Essence of Hedging: Malaysia and Singapore´ s Response to a Rising China

Recent International Relations scholarships and policy publications have used the term as an alternative to and in describing small states' strategies towards a rising power. In the case of Southeast Asian countries' responses to a reemerging China, more and more analysts have asserted that none of the smaller states are pursuing balancing or bandwagoning in the strict sense of the terms, and that the states are in fact adopting a middle position that is best described as hedging. This paper seeks to assess this assertion by performing three principal tasks. First, it attempts to identify the key defining attributes and functions of hedging as a strategy that is distinguishable from pure forms of balancing and bandwagoning. Second, it aims to operationalize the term within the context of Southeast Asia-China relations, by focusing on the cases of Malaysia and Singapore's response to China in the post-Cold War era. Third and finally, the study explains why these two states have chosen to hedge in the way they do. The central argument of the essay is that the substance of the two smaller states' policies are not determined by their concerns over the growth of China's relative power per se; rather, it is a function of regime legitimation through which the ruling elite seek to capitalize on the dynamics of the rising power for the ultimate goal of justifying their own political authority at home.

Lifting the Burden of Schistosomiasis—Defining Elements of Infection‐Associated Disease and the Benefits of Antiparasite Treatment

Over the past 50 years the challenge of schistosomiasis control has persisted as a complex dilemma for health policymakers- there has even been a debate about whether schistosomiasis has any significance to public health and whether it has priority for control. The major schistosome parasites of humans Schistosoma haematobium S. mansoni and S. japonicum are prevalent in many parts of Africa the Middle East South America China Southeast Asia and the Philippines and there are 1200 million people who are infected worldwide. The article by Koukounari et al. in this issue of the Journal is part of a modern multigroup research effort that aims to better define the impact of schistosomiasis on childrens health and to refine the understanding of the specific benefits of mass treatment in schistosomiasis-endemic settings. One of the particular strengths of the study is its large size and the broad distribution of its study subjects across the country of Burkina Faso. The study children were treated there as part of the ongoing Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI). (excerpt)

A Developing Plate Boundary: Tianshan-Baikal Active Tectonic Belt

It is obvious that a great amount of strong earthquakes in central Asia occurred densely along Tianshan-Baikal belt; however, none of huge continuous fault has been revealed on the surface along the belt. It caused academic argument related to their relationship. The authors analyzed its seismic activity in terms of seismicity in time-space domain, zoning feature, stress field, and recurrence period of earthquakes. In addition, we studied the Bouguer gravity and isostatic anomaly, and calculated the distribution of density and shear wave velocity in the upper mantle. It is found that there is a gradient belt of density and velocity along NE direction at the depths of 70–250 km, which is actually a Cenozoic boundary of cold mantle and hot mantle, and has an overpass relation with the structure existing in the upper lithosphere. It is inferred that this gradient belt in the upper mantle played an important role in controlling present tectonic movement and stress field in Eurasia continent. As far as the earthquake nature in this belt is concerned, it is neither an interplate earthquake nor an intraplate one in the traditional sense. Such kind of earthquake caused by overpass structure actually belongs to the structural earthquake, and is of interplate within a continent. In this paper, the overpass relation and mirror relation in time-space domain between deep and shallow structures are discussed briefly. It is also noted that the overpass structures shown in the areas of both north-south seismic belt of China and eastern seismic belt of Iran are related to a special structure in the upper mantle. We conclude that the Tianshan-Baikal active tectonic belt is a developing boundary of plates, a typical tectonic within a continent, which separates Eurasian plate into two parts, i.e., the stable Russian-Siberia subplate to the north and the active China-Southeast Asia subplate to the south.

Differences in SLE disease activity between patients of Caucasian and South‐East Asian/Chinese background in an Australian hospital

AbstractAim: We performed a semiprospective and retrospective review of all admissions to a single institution of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients, admitted due to active disease. The aim was to describe differences in disease activity as a cause of hospital admissions between patients originating from South‐East Asia/China (SAC) and Caucasians.Method: There were 210 patients admitted for active disease, with a total of 567 admissions for active SLE over a 16‐year period. Allowing for patients who had left our database, there was a total of 3415 patient years of observation.Results: Patients from SAC with a flare requiring admission presented earlier in their disease course and with more active disease than did Caucasians (median SLE Disease Activity Index 13 vs. 8, P= 0.002). They had longer inpatient stays (7 vs. 5 days P = 0.03). There was a trend to higher rates of re‐presentation to hospital for flare (59% in SAC patients vs. 41% in Caucasians, P = 0.09) with more subsequent admissions (3 vs. 2 P = 0.06) despite a shorter period of observation.Conclusions: South‐East Asian/Chinese were more likely to be diagnosed with class III/IV glomerulonephritis and require cyclophosphamide both at presentation and subsequent admissions. More patients from SAC were readmitted to hospital for severe central nervous system disease after their first hospital admission. In this population, lupus patients had more severe flares and more frequently required admission for these than Caucasians.

China's Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils

Chapter 1 Salient Determinants of China's Recent Approach to Asia and its Implications for the United States Chapter 2 Recent Chinese Domestic and Foreign Policies and Priorities Chapter 3 China's Relations with the United States Chapter 4 China's Relations with Russia Chapter 5 Relations with Japan Chapter 6 Relations with the Korean Peninsula Chapter 7 China-Southeast Asia Relations Chapter 8 Relations with Taiwan Chapter 9 Relations with South Asia Chapter 10 Relations with Central Asia Chapter 11 Conclusion: China's Peaceful Approach to Asia and its Implications for the United States

The Yanshanian Orogeny and Two Kinds of Yanshanides in Eastern-Central China

The Tan-Lu Fault was once a transform fault in the Paleotethys, west of which was the Qinling-Dabie Ocean separating the Yangtze Craton from the North China Craton, and east of which was the Su-Lu Ocean separating the Su-Wan Block from the Jiao-Liao Craton. The Qinling-Dabie Ocean closed in the Indosinian orogeny, which created the China-Southeast Asia Subcontinent, with the Tan-Lu Fault becoming a marginal shear zone along the newly-formed amalgamated subcontinent. The Su-Lu Ocean subducted partly in the Indosinian-orogeny, but not closed. In the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, the Su-Wan Block drifted north wards with subduction of the Su-Lu Ocean and moved westwards to converge the subcontinent by sinistral shearing of the ENE-striking fractures. The Su-Lu Ocean finally closed and the Su-Wan Block collided with the Jiao-Liao Craton in the Early Cretaceous, which constituted a part of the magnificent interplate Yanshanides. The interplate orogeny rejuvenated the fossil sutures and deep fractures, as well as the Indosinian orogen, and the intraplate (intracontinental) Yanshanian orogeny occurred in the subcontinent. The East Asia Yanshanides, consisting of the interplate orogens in the outer side and the intraplate orogens in the inner side, collapsed quickly in the latest Early Cretaceous and Late Cretaceous. The eastern China area entered a tensile period from the Eogene, and the tectonic differentiation between the central and eastern China areas since the Jurassic was further strengthened.

Southeast Asia–China Relations: Dialectics of “Hedging” and “Counter‑Hedging”

Hedging At the dawn of the twenty-first century, while the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) heavily promotes trade and investment with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to help it integrate into the world trading order, several member states have also made themselves available in various ways to help the United States retain a military presence in East Asia, as well as acceded to Japan's desire to complement its economic weight in Southeast Asia by playing a more active role in international peacekeeping or regional attempts to fight piracy. ASEAN is aware that it is a small player in the East Asian economic-cum-security arena where the presence of the United States, Japan, and an increasingly powerful China are not only unavoidable, but also keenly felt. By striving for a distribution of power that allows regional countries to maintain a stable external environment conducive to the maximization of trade and investment opportunities, but at the same time deny a potential hegemon the ability to assert undue dominance, Southeast Asian governments hope to achieve essential policy goals such as maintaining national independence, foreign policy autonomy, regional peace, and economic growth. If ASEAN states are engaging in a form of pragmatic “hedging” behaviour, this is principally motivated by the need to optimize economic benefits and minimize security risks in response to an environment of uncertainty, primarily driven by the rise of China as an economic and military power. The region hopes to maximize economic opportunities with China, but is uncertain as to its future foreign and security policy orientation. Will China as a strong country behave like a threatening military hegemon or a friendly economic partner to countries in the region that are, vis-a-vis China, militarily weak, economically unsteady, and beset by ethnic, religious, and boundary problems? ASEAN governments strongly believe that increasing the interdependence of the Chinese economy with that of Southeast Asia and the rest of the world has the effect of giving Beijing a stake in the peace and stability of the region.

Southeast Asia and China: The Role of History and Culture in Shaping Future Relations

Despite the position of the United States as de facto global hegemon, China is a rising power in the world. As Chinese power grows, the projection of Chinese influence will be felt most acutely in Southeast Asia. Whether to accommodate, contain or resist China will depend on future developments that none can foresee, including Chinese ambitions, the policies of other international players (the U.S., Japan), and the cohesion or fragility of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN). This paper argues that in deciding how best to deal with China, two factors that will influence the countries of Southeast Asia are their own long histories of bilateral relations with China and their own differing conceptions of how foreign relations should be conducted. This is to argue that history and culture are central to any understanding of the likely future shape of China-Southeast Asia relations. Only by taking history and culture into account will analysts be in a position to predict how the mainland and maritime states of Southeast Asia are likely to respond to a more powerful, confident and assertive China.