Is China leading? China,Southeast Asia and East Asian integration

Abstract

In East Asia, China’s growing economic weight and economic initiative, along with the corresponding intensification of intra-East Asian economic ties, has renewed debates about the roles played by major power leadership in regional integration. Focusing on China’s particular relations with Southeast Asian states, this article investigates the extent to which China can be said to be substantiating or redirecting existing patterns of East Asian integration. It does so by considering some basic markers of Chinese influence in trade, investment and aid, as well as the domestic-political and regional-political dimensions of leadership that can complicate the ability of otherwise materially able powers to lead. While recent economic initiatives like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank suggest that China is turning to a more proactive approach to East Asian integration, this article also highlights how any prospective leading Chinese role seems likely to be conditioned by a system of expectations and interests constituted by Southeast Asian states and their historical relations with the US and Japan.