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This paper shows that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) benefits significantly from investments in transport infrastructure such as road, railway and port, but not as much from investments in non-transport infrastructure such as real estate. However, using data collected from several sources, including secondary data on the number of infrastructure projects already invested and earmarked to be invested as well as China's direct foreign investment to Southeast Asia, this analysis shows that non-transport infrastructure constitutes a substantially higher proportion of the total infrastructure investments in Southeast Asia than transport infrastructure since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This points to a suboptimization polemic emanating from the mismatch between the injlows of the diferent types of infrastructure investments and ASEAN's need for these inputs for sustainable economic growth. Domestic disharmony, regional rivalry and political conflicts between China and ASEAN as well as other obstacles such as the debt-trap worries reduce the total investment flows to Southeast Asia, exacerbating the suboptimization problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mid-twentieth century, Chg Ldn was a powerhouse of Chinese newspaper publishing in Southeast Asia. A number of the major Chinese newspapers published there during that period are available in the Chinese Library of the National University of Singapore. The contents of these publications -- editorials, commercial advertisements, personal advertisements, serialized novels -- will be of interest to scholar's of Sinophone studies and of modem Vietnamese history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data for actual and approved Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from 1989-2011, this paper explores the major trends in FDI in Myanmar, focusing on changes over time in the source and sector of investment. It argues that over the last decade Myanmar's inward FDI has become heavily concentrated in the extractive and power sectors, while investment in manufacturing, services and other secondary and tertiary sectors has been almost non-existent. This is mostly the result of a poor investment climate, including import and export regulations, a weak judicial system, currency controls and weak property rights. The paper shows that China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand have been the main investors in Myanmar, while Singapore, India and Western countries invested little in the 2000s. This divergence is driven partly by the differing investment patterns of the source countries, yet also reflects commercial and geopolitical realities, sanctions and concerns over energy security. The paper then examines whether and how FDI can lead to economic development in Myanmar, and, closes by discussing the importance of recent political and economic reforms for rebalancing Myanmar's FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When ASEAN celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, it was asked if an organization founded on principles appropriate for the 1960s remains relevant today. Its critics point to the organization's recent failures to indicate that continued reliance on the "ASEAN Way" puts it on the road to irrelevance. Its defenders argue that the peace and stability that ensued since the Association's formation are testimony that the ASEAN formula works. Both conclusions are based on what commentators on either side of the debate believe ASEAN's role should be. This paper argues that an assessment should, instead, be based on what its members want it to do, expressed through policy announcements and documents like the ASEAN Charter. It should also consider the totality of its mandate from diplomacy to economics. Viewed in this way, the grouping has accomplishments to be proud of, but also some failures to regret. The 'ASEAN Way', upheld steadfastly by its member countries' leadership, has been instrumental to both its successes and failures. Overall, while ASEAN may not live up to the expectations of its critics, its achievements in some areas do suggest its continued relevance even under vastly changed circumstances, both domestic and external. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses trade policies in Southeast Asian countries in their wider Asian and global contexts. It not only compares and contrasts trade policies in individual Southeast Asian countries, but also analyses these policies in the context of regional and global economic integration, as well as the economic emergence of two other major Asian economies, China and India. The paper summarizes key trade policy features in ASEAN countries, especially to get a sense of policy variety in the region and to see how policies have changed since the 1997-98 Asian economic crisis. The paper concludes that ASEAN countries cannot rely on external tracks "from above" for meaningful trade policy reform. Rather they have to rely on themselves "from below" as it were. The engine of liberalization and regulatory reform has to be home-driven, with governments taking unilateral measures in response to internal and external conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines China and India's status-seeking efforts in Southeast Asia through the lens of disaster relief cooperation. It explores status-seeking processes and the region's responses, as well as how these shape the regional security order in the Asia-Pacific. We argue that the outcomes of China and India's status-seeking are determined by their own behaviours and the region's interpretations of them. Our analysis reveals that China seeks to elevate its status to become a leading security partner of Southeast Asia, which has only been partially accepted by the region, as demonstrated by its active and institutionalized cooperation with ASEAN but its haphazard bilateral HADR engagement with individual Southeast Asian countries. Meanwhile, India has gone from a low-key player to an important partner, primarily in military terms, as shown by its membership in regional multilateral institutions, the holding of regular bilateral exercises and an acceptance by Southeast Asian states of the deployment of its military for HADR missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the current and future dynamics of Southeast Asia's maritime cooperation with China and India. Southeast Asian states do not only have diverse agendas when it comes to non-traditional and traditional maritime security issues, but their prioritization of these threats also vary. Those variations primarily define Southeast Asian interests for partnerships with actors such as India and China. Given China's geographical centrality, its strong economic relationship with countries in the region and the proximity of its military power, Southeast Asia states will remain far more invested in maritime security cooperation with China than India. Yet, China's territorial and maritime jurisdictional disputes in the South China Sea, and its overpowering shadow on the region, have contributed to anxiety among Southeast Asian states and their search for other security partners. The evolving threat of China's rise and polarization within the region gives New Delhi opportunities to engage. India-China rivalry is also a significant motivation for New Delhi to engage in Southeast Asia's maritime security. Two avenues for this include naval arms transfers and training for sea denial missions to claimant countries in the South China Sea, and cooperation in Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Southeast Asian states face numerous security challenges that require the assistance of external partners. China and India, two Indo-Pacific powerhouses, could offer potential solutions but their relations with Southeast Asian states vary considerably. At the same time, escalating tensions between China and India increase the risks of their engagement with Southeast Asian states leading to greater polarization in the region. By utilizing the "4-C Calculus", which comprises cost, complexity, credibility and capacity, this special issue seeks to understand how Southeast Asian states evaluate China and India as potential security cooperation partners, and whether cooperation with both--together or individually--can help address the region's security needs. The articles in this special issue employ the 4-C framework to analyse five key security concerns: defence modernization; health security; the post-coup crisis in Myanmar; humanitarian assistance and disaster relief; and maritime security. They contribute to the literature on security partnerships by providing fresh insights into our understanding of why and how smaller states partner with larger powers over shared security challenges, as well as by illustrating how certain policy considerations can influence the direction and quality of security partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of its 40th anniversary, this article analyses how the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has sought to deal with the problem of drug production, trafficking and consumption in Southeast Asia. Reviewing more than three decades of cooperation, it asks whether an international regime against the illicit trafficking and abuse of drugs has been established in the region under the auspices of ASEAN. In particular, the paper discusses the ASEAN and China Cooperative Operations in Response to Dangerous Drugs (ACCORD) as an attempt to create a framework of multilateral cooperation. It argues however that it is still premature today to characterise existing regional consultations as a working anti-drug regime. The existing cooperative structure has remained a loose forum for information sharing despite the strong Chinese involvement that has deepened consultations since the late 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a historical institutionalist approach, this article addresses the future of Southeast Asia’s naval forces. Much analysis on this subject employs a linear Realist model in which Southeast Asia’s navies are expected to be the beneficiaries of declining internal security challenges and a deteriorating external threat environment. However, to date neither of these factors, including increasing Chinese assertiveness in the maritime domain, appear to have significantly accelerated naval force development in Southeast Asia. While there have been some capability increases in areas such as submarines, growth has mainly been in patrol boat and fast attack craft classes. Numbers of larger offshore surface combatants like frigates have fallen. This article argues that in countries where army dominance has become institutionalized, and civil control of the military is weak, governments may be unwilling or unable to reallocate funding away from armies to maritime forces. In a funding environment in which national economic growth is moderate, and spending on defence is a lower priority, naval modernization and expansion can be blocked. This article examines the cases of Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar to demonstrate how their armies became dominant and how this may have diminished the growth prospects of their navies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During China’s Republican era (1911–49), amid increasing contacts with Southeast Asia, Chinese Muslims crafted politically useful narratives of Sino–Islamic maritime exchange and Islam’s contributions to Chinese civilization. Two examples stand out in particular: Bai Shouyi’s scholarship on the Song-era materia medica trade and the government-sponsored Chinese Islamic South Seas Delegation’s wartime mission to Malaya. In both cases, Chinese Muslims asserted their connectedness not only to the Chinese nation-state and the Arab Middle East but also to the Islamic world as a whole. Southeast Asia’s significance for modern Chinese Islam lay in providing an inspiration and a destination for these travelling civilizational narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on what is behind the general slowdown in growth of Southeast Asia in 2014 and the prospects of the region going forward. Topics discussed include the deceleration of the aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate in the ten Southeast Asian economies for a second year in a row, the external challenges faced by the region, and the continued slow economic recovery observed in the major industrial economies. It also explores China's role in the region's development.

The article focuses on security developments of the Southeast Asia region. Topics include foreign relations between the U.S. and China, the dispute between countries in the region over the disputed territory of the South China Sea, and an increase in U.S. relations with other countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia. It is suggested that the U.S.-Chinese relations can challenge the unity of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The article examines three sociopolitical issues in Southeast Asia that have become the focus of mass media. These are the implementation of an intergovernmental commission on human rights within the auspices of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the January 1, 2010 secluded elimination of tariffs on most goods traded among China and the other ASEAN nations, and the impact of the global economic crisis in Southeast Asia.

The unresolved maritime claims to all, or parts, of the South China Sea involve Vietnam, Malaysia. the Philippines. Brunei, Taiwan, and China, and have hindered the development of the hydrocarbon resources there. Rising oil prices and China's voracious appetite for energy have stimulated greater interest in the exploitation of the area's oil reserves. Despite the uncertainty, ASEAN countries have involved energy companies in exploration and drilling in their respective claims. Cooperation arrangements between national oil companies including Chinese have been negotiated which hold out the prospect of greater security, even in the absence of a settlement of the maritime claims. Energy cooperation may stabilize the South China Sea providing a secure operating environment for oil exploitation. In time, the way could be prepared for further steps which would involve the claimants in negotiations over a resolution of the maritime claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Southeast Asian states as a group employ two general strategies to protect themselves against domination by a strong China: engagement and hedging. The hedging includes maintaining a modest level of defence cooperation with the United States, which may be called low-intensity balancing against China. This is most clear in the cases of the Philippines and Singapore, and more subtle in the cases of Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. Thailand appears to practice simple hedging, while Myanmar has no alternative to cooperation with China. The region bandwagons with China only to the extent that it desires trade with China and seeks to avoid the costs of alienating the region's rising great power. These findings suggest the region is far from passive, the United States is still a relevant player, and acceptance of China is premised on Beijing's adherence to the promises made in its recent diplomatic campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the economic relations between Southeast Asian countries and China. Promotion of trade and investment with China by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations; Uncertainty of security policy orientation; Acquisition of essential policy goals and foreign policy autonomy.

Relations between China and ASEAN have become critical as the ten Southeast Asian nations face the challenge of proximity to an emerging superpower. In the modern context, China is often viewed as a threat to Southeast Asia on account of its growing economic pre-eminence and presumed expansionist aspirations. However, many countries in the region view relations through a more benign historical prism, one that reflects on China as an arrogant but benign partner, from which the commercial advantage was mostly in favour of the Southeast Asian states. The case of Thailand is instructive because of the much longer history of close ties, both in the historical and modern period. Thailand is moving ever closer to China under the present government, and this is having a distinct impact on Thai culture and policy. And while China does appear to be trying to expand its influence on mainland Southeast Asia, seeing Thailand as a key ally, there is an instinctive reflex on the part of the Southeast Asian states to seek a strategic balance in their economic and political ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which examined China's accession to the World Trade Organization and the proposed Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN)-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Overview of trade and investment relationships between China and ASEAN countries. Demand-side potential and opportunities of ASEAN-China FTA; Impact of the special and differential treatment provision of the Uruguay Agreement on Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Over the past two decades, Chinese leaders have valued good relations with the ASEAN states. ASEAN is even considered as one of the poles in the multipolar power transfiguration in the Asia-Pacific region. Both China and ASEAN intend to play a more significant role in the Asia-Pacific and beyond. Their pursuits are a non-zero sum game and can be mutually supportive. The Asia-Pacific region needs effective representatives in negotiations with the Western powers and in various international organizations. China and ASEAN, on the basis of close bilateral and regional consultations, can perform that role together. But meanwhile, Chinese leaders still face the arduous task of reducing, if not eliminating altogether, fears of a "China threat" and inducing acceptance of their "new international political and economic order" among the ASEAN states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comparison of the changing patterns of export share, product mix, industry structure and export growth among China and ASEAN-4 (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand) as exporters of primary commodities, labour-intensive goods as well as capital-intensive manufactures to their common U.S. import market. The degree of export rivalry or competition among China and ASEAN-4 in the U.S. market is examined by using a conventional shift-share methodology. Changes in ASEAN-China's relative real exchange rate, export composition, as well as changes in their trade patterns, insofar as they might have effects on the export shares of the ASEAN-4 and China to the United States, are considered. The study points unequivocally to some rivalry effects from China on the ASEAN-4's exports to the United States. Some of the possible approaches to attaining a propitious outcome of the competition, and ways to ameliorate adverse effects of the rivalry are raised and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of successful economic reform, the Chinese economy has experienced spectacular growth. This in turn resulted in greater economic integration, with growing trade and investment flows between China and its neighbouring Asia-Pacific economies, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Overall, such an integration process will enhance the development potential of both sides, but separately, ASEAN countries will continue to perceive their bilateral economic relations with China in the context of their individual historical and economic realities. While Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand generally view the opening up of China as a "benevolent stimulus" to their own economic growth, Indonesia still holds some reservation and tends to focus on the competitive aspects of the resurgent Chinese economy. Before their relationship matures, China needs to show greater sensitivity towards its smaller southern neighbours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]