Impact of China's Rise on the Mekong Region

Yos Santasombat

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137476227
• Print ISBN:
  9781349693078
  9781137476210
• Subtopic: Asian Politics

This volume presents a contemporary analysis of the impact of China's rise on the Mekong Region at a critical point in Southeast Asian history. As the most populated country and the second largest economy in the world, China has become an increasingly influential player in global and regional affairs in recent decades. Economic ties between China and her southern neighbors are particularly strong. Yet relations between China and the Mekong region are embedded in complex socio-cultural and political issues. China's accelerated growth, increasing economic footprint, rapid military modernization, and global search for energy, natural resources, and food security have created a wide range of new challenges for smaller countries in Southeast Asia. These new challenges both encourage and limit cooperation between China and the emerging ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). The authors pay close attention to these challenges with particular focus on the impact of Chinese investment, trade, foreign aid, and migration.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Chapter 1  China’s Geoeconomic Strategy: Toward the Riparian States of the Mekong Region
• Chapter 2  China’s “Comrade Money” and Its Social-Political Dimensions in Vietnam
• Chapter 3  Changing Landscape and Changing Ethnoscape in Lao PDR: On PRC’s Participation in the Greater Mekong Subregion Development Project
• Chapter 4  Commodifying Sovereignty: Special Economic Zones and the Neoliberalization of the Lao Frontier
• Chapter 5  Xinyimin, New Chinese Migrants, and the Influence of the PRC and Taiwan on the Northern Thai Border
• Chapter 6  China-Myanmar: Toward a More Balanced and Better Neighborhood
• Chapter 7  Patterns and Impacts of Chinese Assistance in Cambodia
• Chapter 8  The Internationalization of Renminbi: The Encroaching of the Variegated Dragon
• List of Contributors
• Index