Amy King discusses Evelyn Goh and Nan Liu's 'Chinese investments in Southeast Asia'
On 9 November 2023, Amy King spoke as part of a book seminar at the Australian National University to launch a new volume by Evelyn Goh and Nan Liu, Chinese Investments in Southeast Asia: Patterns and Significance (Singapore: ISEAS, 2023).
The book identifies the key drivers of China’s changing pattern of investment in Southeast Asia, highlighting in particular the increasing mobilization of Chinese capital; the increasing opportunities for investment within Southeast Asia itself; and how the Global Financial Crisis reshaped China’s investment position in the region, relative to traditional players such as the US, EU and Japan.
This is a really valuable study in bringing together, for the first time, a clear picture of the changing pattern of Chinese investment in Southeast Asia over the past two decades. The volume will serve as an important launch pad for further analysis and interpretation, and sets out especially clearly the assumptions, limitations, and remaining uncertainties associated with this data.
In her remarks, King highlighted two key areas for further research and interrogation. First, the story of Chinese investment in Southeast Asia is not the same as the story of China’s trade with Southeast Asia, where China has for some time served as the leading trade partner for all or most Southeast Asian countries. Yet this begs the question of how China conceives of Southeast Asia an investment destination, whether it views the region in a singular way, or as comprised of a series of aggregated bilateral deals with very distinct countries. Is China “orchestrating” (to use James Reilly’s term) an overarching investment strategy towards Southeast Asia? Equally importantly, how much are Southeast Asian countries driving these patterns themselves?
Second, the authors spend some time discussing the potential for Chinese investments to serve as sources of strategic vulnerability or dependency by Southeast Asian states. However, King urged the authors to offer greater granularity about the precise ways in which China’s patterns of investment – whether in particular countries or particular sectors – could become sources of vulnerability. Moreover, given that Southeast Asian states have long been recipients of investment from former colonial states (the US, European states and Japan), how have Southeast Asian countries historically grappled with and managed the challenge of investment-led dependency upon the West or Japan? Do Southeast Asian countries view the potential vulnerability posed by investment from China in similar or different ways to their conceptions of investment from the US, Europe and Japan, and could the rise of investment from China reduce Southeast Asian concerns about over-dependency upon these traditional sources of investment?
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