ABSTRACT
This chapter explores China's nexus-based development policy, its current hydropower activities in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), the impetus for Beijing to move capital abroad, and some of the characteristics of Chinese overseas foreign direct investment (OFDI). It examines how China bundles aid and investment and the competitive advantage of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the GMS. The chapter highlights how the politics and economic processes that drive investment between Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam (CLMTV) governments and Chinese SOEs discourage a more holistic nexus approach to international development agendas. It also highlights the key areas where China's policies and approaches to development clash with or discourage more integrated practices and policies that address inter linkages and trade-offs across the nexus. These anti-nexus approaches create significant risks to the water, food, and energy security of much of the region's population, especially the poor.
