China's Economic Ties with ASEAN

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a pillar of the postwar order in East Asia. Founded in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, principally to coordinate security policy during the Cold War, the bloc was significantly enlarged in the 1990s, when it took in low-income countries Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Today, the complex relationship between China and ASEAN combines aspects of cooperation and tension. China's aggressive posturing in the South China Sea illustrates its increasing naval capabilities and willingness to deploy them, whether to secure offshore hydrocarbons and fisheries or to exact leverage over its smaller neighbors to the south. At the same time, China's rise exerts a powerful pull on ASEAN economies, from component manufacturing in Malaysia to banking in Singapore and copper mining in Burma. At once a manufacturing hub and an important source of capital, China has the potential to buoy the ASEAN economies, but also to create structural imbalances that damage the region in the long run.