ABSTRACT

China has become a key infrastructure investor in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region as Japan’s role in this area declined after the 1990s. The paper recreates the analytical framework that explains China’s rise in this area and how it has shaped the country’s foreign infrastructure investment model. The model will then be directly compared with the renewed model for official development assistance (ODA) and foreign infrastructure investment adopted by Japan after its return as a dominant infrastructure exporter from 2010 onwards. The fundamental differences between the Chinese and Japanese investment models and strategies will be revealed. Relevant cases will be introduced as reference.