Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia: How People, Money, and Ideas from China Are Changing a Region

by Pál Nyíri (Editor), Danielle Tan (Editor), Wang Gungwu (Foreword by)

Overview

This is the first book to focus explicitly on how China’s rise as a major economic and political actor has affected societies in Southeast Asia. It examines how Chinese investors, workers, tourists, bureaucrats, longtime residents, and adventurers interact throughout Southeast Asia. The contributors use case studies to show the scale of Chinese influence in the region and the ways in which various countries mitigate their unequal relationship with China by negotiating asymmetry, circumventing hegemony, and embracing, resisting, or manipulating the terms dictated by Chinese capital.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295999296
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	12/01/2016
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Pál Nyíri is professor of global history from an anthropological perspective at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He is the author of Scenic Spots: Chinese Tourism, the State, and Cultural Authority; coauthor of Seeing Culture Everywhere: From Genocide to Consumer Habits; and coeditor of Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia: How People, Money, and Ideas from China Are Changing a Region. Danielle Tan is research associate at the Institute of East Asian Studies (IAO-ENS Lyon), France, and at the Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC, Bangkok). The contributors are Aranya Siriphon, Caroline Grillot, Caroline S. Hau, Oliver Hensengerth, Johanes Herlijanto, Hew Wai Weng, Weiqiang Lin, Chris Lyttleton, Kevin Woods, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, and Juan Zhang.

Table of Contents

Foreword / Wang Gungwu

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: China’s “Rise” in Southeast Asia from a Bottom-Up Perspective / Pál Nyíri and Danielle Tan

Part One | Identities

1. Investors, Managers, Brokers, and Culture Workers: How Migrants from China Are Changing the Meaning of Ch-ineseness in Cambodia / Pál Nyíri

2. Multiplying Diversities: How “New” Chinese Mobilities Are Changing Singapore / Brenda S. A. Yeoh and Weiqiang Lin

3. Translocal Pious Entrepreneurialism: Hui Business and Religious Activities in Malaysia and Indonesia / Hew Wai Weng

Part Two | Livelihoods

4. Border Guanxi: Xinyimin and Transborder Trade in Northern Thailand / Aranya Siriphon

5. Ambivalent Encounters: Business and the Sex Markets at the China-Vietnam Borderland / Caroline Grillot and Juan

Part Three | Norms

6. Entangling Alliances: Elite Cooperation and Competition in the Philippines and China / Caroline S. Hau

7. Chinese Enclaves in the Golden Triangle Borderlands: An Alternative Account of State-Formation in Laos / Danielle Tan

8. “China in Burma”: A Multiscalar Political Economy Analysis / Kevin Woods

9. Water Governance in the Mekong Basin: Scalar Trade-offs, Transnational Norms, and Chinese Hydropower Investment / Oliver Hensengerth

Part Four | Aspirations

10. “Search for Knowledge as Far as China!” Indonesian Responses to the Rise of China / Johanes Herlijanto

11. Stimulating Circuits: Chinese Desires and Transnational Affective Economies in Southeast Asia / Chris Lyttleton

Glossary of Chinese Characters

References

Contributors

Index

What People are Saying About This

Stevan Harrell

"[These case studies] both demonstrate the scale of Chinese influence in the region as a whole and point out clearly that there is no such single thing as ‘Chinese influence,’ but rather disparate influences of different kinds of Chinese people and investors in a dynamic region."

Editorial Reviews

"An excellent work on the impacts of Chinese immigration and investment in Southeast Asia after the 1990s. . . . A highly recommended book that teaches readers about new waves of Chinese immigration, socio-economic development and borderland livelihoods in Southeast Asia, including those that entail political and environmental contestations. . . . This is a high-quality edited volume, containing diverse topics, researched geographies, and varied findings. Those who are interested in learning about Chinese influences in Southeast Asia from a bottom-up perspective will certainly appreciate the reading."

Journal of Burma Studies - Wen-Chin Chang

"This collection examines the practices, network dynamics, and multiple perceptions of the China-Southeast Asia encounter, while simultaneously placing concrete experiences within multi-layered and multi-faceted contexts, thus folding ethnographic data into structural analyses. By presenting broad patterns, examining lived experiences, and identifying a space for policy and public interventions in the China-Southeast Asia encounters, this book is truly valuable on many fronts."

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute - Biao Xiang

Southeast Asia offers diverse political and economic landscapes for mapping how and why Chinese migration and capital flows matter. . . . Each [essay] offers a compelling case study that highlights how everyday interactions and local relationships are rewriting the region at diverse scales, from the Greater Mekong Subregion to border towns. Scholars of China and Southeast Asia will welcome this diverse collection on how money and people from China are shaping the region. Recommended.

Choice