Many studies of China's relations with and influence on Southeast Asia tend to focus on how Beijing has used its power asymmetry to achieve regional influence. Yet, scholars and pundits often fail to appreciate the complexity of the contemporary Chinese state and society, and just how fragmented, decentralized, and internationalized China is today.
In The Ripple Effect: China's Complex Presence in Southeast Asia (Oxford UP, 2024), Enze Han argues that a focus on the Chinese state alone is not sufficient for a comprehensive understanding of China's influence in Southeast Asia. Instead, we must look beyond the Chinese state, to non-state actors from China, such as private businesses and Chinese migrants. These actors affect people's perception of China in a variety of ways, and they often have wide-ranging as well as long-lasting effects on bilateral relations. Looking beyond the Chinese state's intentional influence reveals many situations that result in unanticipated changes in Southeast Asia. Han proposes that to understand this increasingly globalized China, we need more conceptual flexibility regarding which Chinese actors are important to China's relations, and how they wield this influence, whether intentional or not.
The Ripple Effect makes the case that to understand China's relationship with Southeast Asia, it is necessary to move beyond a narrow fixation on the Chinese state by scrutinizing the ordinary manifestations of China's presence in the region and recognizing the multifaceted web of actors and their effects on the dynamics between the two regions.
Enze Han is an associate professor of politics at the University of Hong Kong. He works on the international relations of East Asia, Southeast Asian politics and China-Southeast Asia relations. This is his third single-authored book from Oxford University Press.
Enze is in conversation with Duncan McCargo, President's Chair in Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University and one of the hosts on New Books in Southeast Asian Studies. Duncan's recent co-authored article on the relationship between Thai politics and attitudes to China, mentioned during the podcast, may be found here.
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