ABSTRACT
Since China’s paramount leader Xi Jinping assumed office in 2012, his government’s economic, military and foreign policies have had a significant impact on the development of Sino-Southeast Asian relations. Rather than having had a transformative impact, however, Xi’s policies have mostly intensified existing trends lines: China’s relations with ASEAN and its member states have continued to broaden and deepen; two-way trade and investment have flourished; and its emergence as Asia’s pre-eminent military power, more assertive behaviour in the South China Sea and growing rivalry with America have intensified Southeast Asia’s geopolitical concerns. To illustrate the changing nature of China’s relations with Southeast Asia over the past eight years, this chapter focuses on three interlinked issues: rising tensions in the South China Sea as Beijing has moved to assert its claims more aggressively; the progress of Xi’s signature Belt and Road Initiative; and regional perceptions of heightened US-China competition. It concludes that in the era of Xi Jinping, Southeast Asian states simultaneously seek to take advantage of, but avoid dependence on, China’s growing economy while trying to preserve the region’s strategic autonomy as US-China hostility escalates.
