ABSTRACT
Relations between China and the countries of Southeast Asia have
improved markedly since 1997. This positive turn in China-Southeast Asia relations has its origins in events that go back to the 1980s. The end of the
Cold War, the rapid increase in prosperity that was spurred on by the flood
of Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) from the late 1980s onwards,
and the Asian economic crisis of 1997-98, all had major consequences for
the way in which the governments of China and the countries of Southeast
Asia viewed their external relations. The emergence of a sense of East Asian
regionalism, and especially the advent of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) Plus Three (China, Japan and South Korea) process (APT), has facilitated the rapid improvement in relations between
China and the members of ASEAN.
