Suchergebnisse

Becoming the world's largest trading economy has been central to China's re-emergence as Asia's leading power. For optimists, this promises a new China-centred Asian Century of mutual benefit. For pessimists, growing economic dependence on China is reducing states' autonomy by enhancing China's leverage over them. Southeast Asian economies – geographically close to China, bound to China by regional production chains and individually much smaller – have each seen their trading relations with China change significantly over the last six years. A close look at China aggregate trade figures with Southeast Asia over this period highlights China's growing importance as an export market and trading partner for all Southeast Asian states, and the different trajectories of China's trade with the poorer mainland Southeast Asian economies and the wealthier maritime Southeast Asian ones. A comparison with Southeast Asian economies' trade flows with the USA, Japan and Southeast Asia itself raises serious questions about the supposed displacement of the USA by China in the region, and the effectiveness of ASEAN-led efforts to deepen Southeast Asian economic integration and reduce the intra-regional development gap.

Economically, Australia has benefitted significantly from China's post-Cold War rise. Australian trade statistics underline how deep this commercial relationship has become. In 2016-17, China accounted for over a quarter of total Australian merchandise trade, close to a third of total merchandise exports, and over four-fifths of Australian exports of iron ore. In fact, Australia's trade with China was more than one and a half times larger than Australia's trade with the US and Japan combined.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), now being negotiated between ASEAN and its six existing trade agreement partners 2 , is an opportunity of underappreciated global significance. If the negotiations are successfully concluded and the agreement is ratified and implemented, it will be the largest trade deal in GDP and population terms since the GATT Uruguay Round agreement in 1994 which established the World Trade Organization.

All inter-state organisations are shaped and challenged by the changing engagement of their major stakeholders, the difficulties associated with consensus-based reform and consolidation, the inevitable gap between expectations and feasible delivery, and the evolving strategic environment within which they exist. Where ASEAN is concerned, the mutually reinforcing effects of such challenges will test the East Asia Summit (EAS) and threaten its peak position in the ASEAN-led regional architecture in the coming years. How ASEAN member states and ASEAN itself respond will help determine the EAS' future status.

The unfolding competition between a more aggressive, unilateralist China and a more unpredictable, unilateralist USA heralds the end of the benign post-Cold War order that benefited Southeast Asia and ASEAN.1 As the new strategic disorder sets in, ASEAN's balancing act and aspirations for centrality – both within its diverse membership and in relations with the two great powers – have become more difficult and tenuous. COVID-19, by laying bare the ever-widening chasm between the two superpowers, has heightened fears that ASEAN member states will become more disunited and ASEAN and its broader ASEAN+ groupings will be paralysed.

Significant foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to maritime Southeast Asia (and more recently Vietnam) have been the key factor behind the economic development and in the integration into the global economy of the countries located in that region. Southeast Asia's prospects as a destination for foreign direct investment are bright, and over the last decade, FDI stock per capita in the region has increased five-fold from USD$500 in 2000 to nearly USD$ 2,500 in 2013.1 In this same period, regional real GDP per capita grew only 1.6 times to reach USD$ 2,255 in 2013.2 Using the latest UNCTAD statistics on bilateral foreign direct investment flows into nine Southeast Asian economies, this Perspective will look at what FDI flows tell us about two of the major strategic concerns of Southeast Asian states and of ASEAN: 1. The significance of the relationship for each Southeast Asian state and the region as a whole, between economic development, global economic integration and dependence on (or autonomy from) major extra-regional powers. The growing trade dependence of Southeast Asian economies on China and China's growing influence in Southeast Asia are the current focus of this foundational regional concern. 2. Further strengthening of integration among Southeast Asian economies and through this reducing the development gap between them. This regional economic virtuous circle is seen to be particularly important for supporting ASEAN unity and centrality.