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The paper examines if the ‘economic centre’ of Asia is likely to shift over the next 20 years. In this context, it addresses the widely held notion that a deterioration of Southeast Asia's geographic centrality within the Asia Pacific region is likely to occur due to the rise of China. GNP-weighted centrality indices are calculated for major Asian cities, and it is shown that the changing economic map of Asia is unlikely to lead to geographic marginalization of Southeast Asia: even if the economic importance of China increases significantly, this will be more than offset by the corresponding decline of Japan. As a consequence, the total economic weight of Northeast Asia is likely to decrease slightly compared to Southeast Asia and Greater India over the next 20 years, with the economic centre of Asia moving further to the southwest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has had a huge impact on many industries around the world. Internationally-funded enterprises have been greatly affected by COVID-19 prevention and control measures, such as border controls. However, few studies have examined the impact of COVID-19 on internationally-funded enterprises. To this end, this paper considered 12 of China's industrial parks situated in Southeast Asia, while comparing the operation status before and after the outbreak of COVID-19 based on remote sensing of nighttime lights (NTL). The NTL is generally used as a proxy for economic activity. First, six parameters were proposed to quantify and monitor the operation status based on NTL data. Subsequently, these parameters were calculated for the parks and for 10 km buffer zones surrounding them to analyze the differences in operating conditions. The results showed that (1) despite the negative impact of COVID-19, 9 out of the 12 parks had a mean NTL greater than 1, indicating that these parks are in better operating condition in 2020 than 2019; (2) 7 out of the 10 km buffer zones around the parks showed a decline in mean NTL. Only three parks showed a decline in mean NTL. The impact of COVID-19 on surrounding areas was greater than the impact on parks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remittances of Chinese overseas during the decades before and just after the Second World War formed an important part of China's economy and were a significant feature of Southeast Asia's economic history. Familial and ethnic sentiments drove this impulse to send money back to China. In reviewing evidence for Malaya and Singapore, this paper is a new study on the nature, the role and the mechanisms of transmission of these remittances. In charting the ebb and flow of remittances during the period, this study examines several factors responsible for the subsequent decline of these flows. These are political changes, both in China and Southeast Asia, the policies and regulations of the British colonial administration, and generational change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The highlands of mainland Southeast Asia have famously been the locus of “Zomia,” polities resistant to control by lowland nation-states, but this relative resilience has been due to their marginality. However, as even remote borderlands connect to the market economies of what has been labeled the “Greater Mekong Subregion,” these semi-independent polities are trying to transform themselves from isolated drug enclaves into regional paragons of economic modernity labeled “Special Economic Zones.” The main actors in this transformation are ethnic Chinese migrant capitalists who embrace the economic rhetoric of mainland China's “growth model” to create respectability and to evoke images of a cosmopolitan future as they build casinos in the rainforest. The zones’ claim to be the vanguard of modernity rests on two mutually contradictory sets of symbols: a mimicry of Chinese state paraphernalia designed to conjure up the efficacy of a strong developmental state, and the discourse of freedom from state control. This article examines the transformation of zones of political and criminal resistance into zones of economic development from a historical perspective of changing practices of sovereignty and shifting understandings of development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]