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With China's economic rise and influence, financial statecraft has increasingly been deployed to serve the country's national interest. The growth of China's financial statecraft in the region has drawn greater media and academic attention. Notwithstanding the abundant literature on China's financial statecraft in Southeast Asia, the previous studies lack a detailed analysis of various financial statecraft instruments deployed by China. To get a better understanding of China's deployment of financial statecraft over the years under Xi Jinping's administration, this article fills the gap in the existing literature by delving into various factors that influenced various financial statecraft instruments with respect to the objectives, trends or patterns and agencies involved in the region. Given Xi's successful bid for continued political rule by eliminating a term limit on the presidency as well as the escalating China-US strategic rivalry, it is important to examine how the interaction of domestic and international forces has shaped the evolution of financial statecraft in Southeast Asia. Due to the changes in domestic politics and shifts in the geopolitics and geoeconomics, an important question that deserves our attention is how these changes has influenced China's deployment of various financial statecraft instruments in different Southeast Asian countries. The paper focuses on two middle-income countries (i.e., Malaysia and Thailand) and two low-income countries (i.e. Cambodia and Laos) in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Management of the South China Sea disputes must consider the "hedging" behavior of the claimant and non-claimant countries. This behavior is characterized by an insistence on not aligning with any of the competing powers, through intentionally contradictory actions to offset multiple risks, or through a continuous effort to maintain a fallback position. Indeed, in the face of China's increasingly assertive actions and U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, nearly all the states in the region have avoided "balancing" (fully aligning with the U.S. to check China) and none of them have adopted "bandwagoning" (fully aligning with China for economic reasons but at the expense of autonomy and other national interests). Instead the Southeast Asian states have insisted on hedging. This paper argues that this proclivity to hedge is a result of both structural and domestic factors. Structurally, the high uncertainties surrounding China's intentions, U.S. commitment, and future U.S.-China ties have compelled the smaller states to avoid putting all their eggs in either power's basket. Domestically, for their political legitimation, the ruling elites in the states hedge to offset multiple risks and pursue mixed policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Southeast Asia and Europe are key regions for the implementation of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). A comparison of China's attempt to promote the BRI in both regions reveals that China acts both as a norm-setter and norm-taker. Both the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the European Union which established distinct regional governance systems perceive China's growing ability to set norms in their region as a strategic threat. However, the 17+1 (formerly 16+1) cooperation format, established by China in Central and Eastern Europe as an umbrella for its bilateral relations, is embedded in the EU's governance system. In Southeast Asia, China cooperates with the individual governments on a bilateral base, but also utilizes the existing ASEAN infrastructure schemes. The article argues that China needs to be better included in the established international and regional governance mechanisms. It concludes that after mutual compromises of the participants and reforms the New Silk Road could function as a respected framework for multilateral collaboration that complements, but does not replace the existing governance structures and principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]