Among other things and in spite of China’s rising influence, the ASEAN countries do not appear to be ready to understand in what ways such an impact could affect them, and so they seem to be unprepared for the next big things to come. With the new “size matters” era, significant linkages with mainland ASEAN through cross- and behind-border transactions and human flows are likely to be asymmetric, with new footprints coming out of recent connectivity and infrastructure linking China to mainland ASEAN, not only by air but also by road, railway, and river transport and communications, plus new technology that will transform the political, economic, and social landscape as well as the new dynamics of this unbalanced relationship, as never seen before in recent history.
These few factors, at least, will engender a new age of unbalanced and asymmetric relationship between ASEAN and China. First, porous common borders could strongly contribute to all sorts of new flows between them, from Vietnam, Lao PDR, and Myanmar to the rest of mainland and maritime ASEAN, all have seen intense and tremendous changes of flow all along the borders into their territories in recent years. Second, new planned connectivity and infrastructure with China’s encouragement as in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will help make these bilateral flows very open, easy, and more intense, unlike in the past when they were blocked by difficult geography, which made these flows quite small and insignificant. Third, technology and innovation in a changing China are at present fully part of new China’s global and regional value chains, which have also been integrated with ASEAN’s own value chains. These trends are a recent phenomenon and keep increasing, despite the China–US trade war. Last but not least, China, with a population of almost 1.4 billion people, along the two provinces, Yunnan and Guangxi, connected to the ASEAN mainland, will see its sizable middle class, with more disposable income per capita and entrepreneurial as they all are, looking beyond China for new opportunities, with ASEAN just proximal to them.
More recently, China has aimed at its connections and integration with ASEAN. From China’s perspective, ASEAN is more recently an interesting region, “cheap” so to say, for China to deal with increasingly (China Daily, 2015). Indeed, this overall course of development will be plausible in the coming years, but for ASEAN it will raise both opportunities and concerns. An entirely different regional outlook, in China’s eyes, emerges, as ASEAN is being paired with China. The future will depend on China’s own development and market dynamics, offshoring and onshoring in different sectors and firms, and whether and in what way ASEAN can represent as future offshore production networks of China. It is still interesting to ask whether this will lock ASEAN into China for the foreseeable future, particularly for third-tier ASEAN (CLM), while on the way up, and put mid-tier ASEAN in a difficult position (Pieterse et al., 2017).
Along the line, China’s future relations with mainland ASEAN, in this sense, are not straightforward, nor is it simple to answer in what way they are of mutual benefit or asymmetric, because its “size matters” to ASEAN (Alesina & Spolaore, 2005) and could complicate the changing landscape and new dynamics, at least in the issues of population, GDP, or military expenditure. But definitely, mutual relations are already multiplex (Acharya, 2017), both in terms of mutual benefit and asymmetries, and their character depends on how and to what extent the ASEAN governments, institutions, firms, and people are able to live up to China’s challenges. Most notable will be the human face of the ASEAN–China relations that we need to put on this articulation so that multi-level relations between them can go up at one level and down at another (as in the case of the South China Sea). Any cooperation with China from ASEAN comes inevitably with economic and political asymmetries, but needs to move beyond to cover the human dimension so as to balance better in any future discussion on the ASEAN–China partnership.
In an earlier study titled “China’s Rise in Mainland ASEAN: Changing Landscapes and New Dynamics,” (Chirathivat et al., 2019) evidence has been shown of the fast changes in many aspects of their relations, with country and sector studies, hence the complexities of this new era of size matters so that no one can miss to interpret and learn from them. On the whole, it is too early to comment on ASEAN’s role in the play or in the framework of these changing trends of China’s rising influence, which could impact their future integration and partnerships. Encouraged by positive responses, the present study embarked by extending our work to more partners, and new areas, in particular, on the issues of how to learn to live with a new era of China.
The focus of the present volume will be the implications and local and regional responses from ASEAN as China’s rising influence could turn out to be a kind of increasing interdependence versus dependence that needs to be interpreted with more sophistication in terms of models/tools/instruments, through managed influence with Chinese characteristics. However, China’s growing presence in the region should not lead to a “witch-hunt” response, in which everything Beijing does is met with hysteria. That is why a more operational side of the implications and delicate proper response will be most crucial in the analyses and understanding of China’s growing influence and on how China is projecting herself in mainland ASEAN in new ways, which will also be put into practice on the ground.
1.2.About the Book
This volume consists of four sections, each of which covers key topics and issues related to key themes on China’s growing influence in mainland ASEAN and implications and local and regional responses.
1.2.1.Big Picture
The first section discusses opportunities, challenges, and implications of both Xi Jinping Thought and Lancang–Mekong Cooperation in relation to mainland ASEAN. Highlighting the unprecedented move from core ideas to the effects of implementation is discussed in context of the Southeast Asian region. In this section, Vira Somboon in his chapter “Xi Jinping Thought and Mainland ASEAN” argues that President Xi Jinping holds threefold supreme leadership over the party, the military, and the state of the People’s Republic of China, as well as providing the main ideational, ideological, and discursive formations of Chinese society. This chapter reviews the core ideas, strategies, and policy guidelines inherent in the “Xi Jinping Thought” on “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”, particularly those issues pertaining to China’s rise at the global scale and its new phases of development. It then relates these themes to China’s orientation towards ASEAN, in general, and mainland ASEAN, in particular. It argues that, in terms of ASEAN, it is Singapore which constitutes the most significant geo-political and geo-economic leverage for China. And, as far as mainland ASEAN is concerned, it is the overall power position of China as the “hydro-hegemon” of the Mekong River Basin that determines positive and negative configurations of international cooperation in this vast area. China views its economic and connectivity schemes in the Mekong sub-region as important parts of the BRI. It remains to be seen if this will bring about what may be styled after China’s own terminology: “One Belt, One Road, One River.” This chapter raises a general question about mainland ASEAN and China, i.e. whether mainland ASEAN is simply a supplementary passage for China’s actual destination elsewhere.
Yang Baoyun and Patcharinruja Juntaronanont in their chapter “The Effects of the Lancang–Mekong Cooperation on Mainland ASEAN Countries: Opportunities or Challenges?” underline the importance of the recent sub-regional initiative for both sides. In recent years, cooperation between China and mainland ASEAN has been expanding and is being deepened in various fields through different levels of cooperation. The Lancang–Mekong Cooperation mechanism (LMC), established in March 2016, has created a new platform for cooperation between China and mainland countries in Southeast Asia, namely, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. In a few years since the establishment of the LMC, a series of concrete achievements have been made to provide new opportunities for cooperation between China and the countries of the Mekong River Basin in the fields of politics, security, economy, culture, and society. At the same time, there are still some doubts about this cooperative mechanism in the countries concerned. This chapter