How should China’s relationship with Southeast Asia be characterized? It is, surely, a paradoxical one. Chinese netizens, fueled by nationalism and growing fears surrounding scam centers, have at times discouraged their compatriots from traveling to the region altogether. Yet Chinese tourism, migration, investment, and cultural exchange with Southeast Asia remain extensive, while longstanding ethnic Chinese ties continue to shape the region’s relationship with the mainland. In Professor Enze Han’s view, the relationship is intimate and asymmetrical, but Southeast Asian countries are hardly devoid of agency.
Professor Enze Han is Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration. His research interests include international relations of East Asia, China’s relations with Southeast Asia, and international migration and diaspora politics. Professor Han received a Ph.D. in Political Science from George Washington University in the United States in 2010. Afterwards, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University.
During 2015-2016, he was a Friends Founders’ Circle Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA. During 2021-2022, he was Lee Kong Chian Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia at the National University of Singapore and Stanford University. His recent book, The Ripple Effect: China’s Complex Presence in Southeast Asia, was published by Oxford University Press in 2024.
Alice Liu: You wrote that China is “hedging” in Myanmar by maintaining multiple relationships with various competing actors, including the military junta, ethnic armed organizations, and potentially the National Unity Government. What does “hedging” mean? I see the term mostly applied to U.S.-China relations. Why is it applicable to this context?
Enze Han: Many people have worked on hedging as a foreign policy practice. Mostly, people focus on smaller states in Southeast Asia in terms of their foreign policy choices by not aligning with either the United States or China but engaging with them both. Essentially, it means that you are not putting all your eggs in one basket. That’s why, conventionally, it’s used as a smaller state’s foreign policy choice toward great power competition.
Now, I use it in Myanmar’s domestic political situation because the country is very special. The reason why China “hedges” in Myanmar is that Myanmar, at least since 2021 until very recently, has been a fragmented state. There’s no single authority that can decide for the whole country. That means that for a comprehensive relationship that China has with Myanmar, it must engage with multiple stakeholders in the country. The military government controls half of the country, the other rebel groups control the other half, and you also have the National Unity Government in exile. That’s the reason why China, at least from 2021 to 2025/2026, has been trying to engage with multiple stakeholders for different purposes. That’s why I call it hedging.
But I think things are changing. Not just China but also India, Thailand, and basically all the other major neighboring countries of Myanmar have concluded that this military government is not going away. During the last year, the Myanmar military has consolidated its control and retaken many of the territories that it previously lost to various rebel groups. That means the hedging strategy would not be practiced as much as before. As the central government is now taking back control, neighboring countries are going to throw their weight more toward the military government than toward the rebels.
China is special in the sense that Beijing has a long-term relationship with many rebel groups along the border, a special relationship that dates back to the Cold War era and is unlikely to be abandoned by Beijing. That means China’s approach toward Myanmar is going to have this hedging element anyway, but more in terms of recognizing the military for overall diplomatic purposes while maintaining a sort of buffer policy with rebels along its border.
AL: To what extent is China’s current strategy toward Myanmar a reflection of its earlier miscalculation? You said that the Chinese government suffered from its overdependence on the Myanmar military in the past, especially in 2011 and 2012. Can you say more about that?
EH: At that time, the military government tried to diversify its foreign policy by engaging with the West. That’s the reason why Beijing felt that it was caught off guard and, in a sense, betrayed by the military government.
But I think right now, it’s very unlikely to recur because the balance of power in the region is quite asymmetrical, particularly toward Myanmar. Also, this military government has too many enemies, and it’s very unlikely that the West, or the U.S. in particular, would be able to find a way to engage with it without incurring domestic backlash among democracy promoters. So, I think it’s very unlikely.
AL: For our readers who might be unfamiliar with the situation in Myanmar, could you provide a very brief context for the history of China-Myanmar relations? What major geopolitical interests does China hold in Myanmar?
EH: Myanmar, previously called Burma, has long been a neighbor with more than 2,000 kilometers of border with China. It was also the first country in Southeast Asia to recognize the PRC. The relationship between the two has gone through different periods, with ups and downs. But in recent decades, Myanmar, as well as other Southeast Asian countries, has become heavily dependent on trade with China.
In particular, Myanmar holds a variety of geopolitical purposes for Beijing. It is a neighboring country that provides access to the Indian Ocean. One of Beijing’s strategic designs was to bypass the Strait of Malacca and gain access to the Indian Ocean via Myanmar. That was the background for China building two pipelines, an oil pipeline and a gas pipeline, linking Yunnan Province with the Bay of Bengal. Myanmar also has lots of natural resources that China needs. More recently, there have been many news reports about rare earth minerals in Myanmar, one of the key components of China’s rare-earth supply.
So, this is a country that borders China, whose economy is heavily dependent on China, and where Beijing wields a substantial amount of influence. That influence comes not only from supporting the current military government, but also from Beijing’s long-term relationships with several rebel armies within Myanmar itself. Given that Myanmar is one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia, it is very dependent on Chinese investment and trade. So, basically, Beijing has a lot of designs for Myanmar. But then again, Myanmar internally is too fragmented, and maintaining those strategic designs is not necessarily economical.
That means the pipelines and other infrastructure projects, in my opinion, are not likely to be sustainable in the long term. Beijing would like to see greater domestic consolidation of power by any government, whether military or democratic. But the problem is that the country has been fragmenting. Especially recently, even though the military is getting better at consolidating its territories, its capacity is still very limited. So, we are very likely to see Myanmar continue to be this kind of weak, fragmented state. That means any major power trying to engage with Myanmar, despite whatever lofty designs it might have for the country, will find Myanmar not able to deliver on those things.
AL: One of the reasons this article in particular stood out to me is that you said Beijing’s approach toward Myanmar suggests a departure from its tradition of non-interference when it comes to global affairs. Do you think that China, in the case of Myanmar, is reversing its stance on non-interference for purely pragmatic concerns, or is it becoming more genuinely involved in other countries’ domestic politics?
EH: For me, I think China should abandon its non-interference policy. As a great power, you should have the ability and the will to interfere in other countries’ politics to make them more favorable to your own interests. I think China’s non-interference policy is a Cold War legacy from a time when Beijing was weak. I think, as time goes by, Beijing should abandon it.
AL: I’d also like to discuss how the Chinese public perceives Southeast Asia as a region. Your survey identified three frameworks: affinity, annoyance, and apprehension. Tell me what you meant by that, if you will; how can these three seemingly contradictory frameworks coexist?
EH: That’s because Southeast Asia as a region is actually very diverse internally. In terms of economic inequality within Southeast Asia, you have rich countries such as Singapore, which is richer than most Western countries, and then you have poorer countries such as Myanmar, which is poorer than many sub-Saharan African states. That’s why Chinese people’s conception of Southeast Asia is not uniform. They admire Singapore. Many want to migrate there. But then they also despise poorer countries such as Myanmar or Cambodia.
Similarly, on the question of safety, the perception of parts of Southeast Asia, such as Cambodia and Myanmar, is really negative because people are concerned that these countries are very dangerous. This has to do with extensive reports on cases of kidnapping and the trafficking of Chinese citizens into scam centers. These are legitimate concerns for ordinary Chinese citizens. So, that’s why you have these very different perceptions of the region. It’s not uniform.
AL: In discussions about Southeast Asia-China relations, ethnic affinity plays a big part. You said that 78% of respondents either strongly or somewhat agreed that China should play a protective role for overseas Chinese in the region. I’m curious: where do you think the Chinese public, in their mentality, draws the boundary between protecting overseas Chinese and intervening in the affairs of another country? Or are you suggesting that the boundary is practically nonexistent?
EH: For an ordinary Chinese person, it’s difficult to differentiate between varieties of ethnic Chinese and Chinese citizenship. So, people often conflate being ethnically Chinese with being Chinese politically, in terms of citizenship in the PRC. This is, in some ways, not necessarily peculiar. Many countries have these same problems: the difficulty of differentiating between citizenship and kinship relationships.
Given that domestic nationalism demands a stronger state reaction in cases where the ethnic Chinese population is affected, the public, ordinary people, probably will have this sentiment. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean it would be reflected in state policy. It is just public sentiment.
AL: As shown by 20th-century U.S. history, democratic governments are often hamstrung by public opinion…
EH: That’s actually not true. If you look at recent studies, many people would actually tell you that democracies are also not constrained by public opinion. Public opinion is often a cue. In some ways, basically, the state has a lot of influence on how the public reacts to things.
AL: But that leads to my question: Does public opinion somehow also influence Beijing’s diplomacy? If so, through what means?
EH: For me, Chinese public opinion can be a way to understand how the Chinese state has been messaging toward its domestic public. So rather than looking at public opinion data from China as an indication of how it would affect Beijing’s foreign policy, we should think that public opinion, in some sense, is a reflection of Chinese decision-making.
AL: You said that the Chinese public’s understanding of the outside world, especially Southeast Asia, is not necessarily grounded in empirical experience or knowledge but is more often a reflection of an imagined reality, shaped by a combination of historical narratives and state media portrayals. How do information and media in China play a role in shaping how Chinese people think about Southeast Asia? To what extent do you find this an important factor?
EH: It’s very important because, in every country, the majority of people would not have any particular knowledge of other countries. China is not exceptional, and the majority of its citizens have never gone abroad. That means your image of the outside world is heavily constrained by media consumption. You consume information from official government media, but also lots of social media. They have different ways, different logics, of portraying the outside world.
In that sense, Chinese public perceptions of the outside world are going to be heavily conditioned by their media consumption. Now, this consumption, I would say, obviously exists within China’s information bubble. It’s mostly the consumption of domestic media. That means the state has a very strong upper hand in terms of feeding the public what type of information or what type of narrative they need to consume.
On the other hand, there is a different logic for social media. Social media platforms tend to consciously generate clicks and followers by creating sensational topics. So, the easiest way is to sensationalize issues about the outside world. In the Southeast Asian context, you are very likely to come across influencers or social media content creators who deliberately create these very sensationalist topics for people to click on. An ordinary factual story might not appeal to the general public. So, that’s the other problem: social media consumption can probably create this kind of polarizing effect on the public as well.
AL: That was the state. What role do Chinese non-state actors—private businesses and enterprises, migrants, travelers—play in China-Southeast Asia relations?
EH: In many ways, China’s relationship with Southeast Asia is comprehensive. Comprehensive in the sense that this is a region that is closest to China geographically, but also a region that has a tremendous amount of Chinese economic activity. In terms of investment, China is one of the largest investors in many countries in the region. That means Chinese businesses are going to come to those countries to open factories, shops, and other businesses. In terms of manufacturing, electric vehicles, and selling a variety of consumer goods, you have this very prominent presence of Chinese businesses within Southeast Asia.
Southeast Asia is also not far from China. That means tourism is also a major factor. Annually, you have tens of millions of Chinese citizens traveling to Southeast Asia because it is close. Countries in Southeast Asia are therefore also very dependent on Chinese tourism. This means people’s interactions with Chinese citizens are very frequent because they can see Chinese tourists everywhere. Again, in addition to businesses and tourism, you have other types of migrants, such as migrants for retirement. You also have, for example, Chinese criminal networks operating in Southeast Asia. As I mentioned earlier, you have scam centers, and you also have various kinds of illegal activities in which Chinese triads and criminal networks might be involved.
Therefore, Southeast Asia’s interaction with China is very frequent and comprehensive. That’s why I often describe China’s relationship with Southeast Asia as intimate. Now, intimate doesn’t mean it’s good. It just means it’s very close. While the Chinese market in normal times might mean good business, it also means that countries can become exposed to its shocks if they become too dependent. This intimate relationship can be good, bad, or a mix of those things, but that level of intimacy is unique. I don’t observe it in China’s relationship with any other region.
AL: The term “soft power” often comes into discussion with geopolitical relationships. America is believed to have benefited from its soft power worldwide. Do you think China also exerts some kind of soft power in Southeast Asia?
EH: I think Beijing’s goal, obviously, is to build up more soft power. Soft power is difficult to define in terms of how you build up your influence. But essentially, it means you want to make yourself more attractive to others. That’s why China has put up more cultural products for export. You have the promotion of the Chinese language and culture within Southeast Asia. Additionally, lots of Chinese social media content is very popular in Southeast Asia.
On the other hand, if you look at those opinion polls coming from Southeast Asia, Beijing overall is viewed very positively, at least in public opinion in major Southeast Asian countries, except for the Philippines. Overall, public opinion is positive. People do not necessarily dislike China. The most recent Pew survey, for example, shows that more than 60% of Singaporean people have positive views of China, much more so than toward the U.S. That kind of reality means that China’s soft power in Southeast Asia is actually not too shabby.
This is partly based on cultural output and cultural exports. But on the other hand, I think Southeast Asian people’s perceptions of China are also based on the realization, or the increasing understanding, of the PRC’s economic conditions. When more people realize that China is becoming a much more developed economy and that its living standards are actually very high, that kind of appreciation will grow even stronger. So, in countries without much of an information bubble, I think that realization of the development and progress that China has made is going to be a very strong source of appeal and attraction for quite a lot of countries in Southeast Asia.
AL: In your book, The Ripple Effect, when discussing China’s presence in Southeast Asia, you emphasize the importance of distinguishing between intended and unintended influences. What do you mean by that?
EH: That basically means—this is not a condition unique to China but can apply to anybody—lots of things happen not because of what we wanted to happen, but somehow out of accident, random effects, or other alternative causal mechanisms. The Chinese state intends for some of its policies or actions to cause deep repercussions in Southeast Asia. But we must also consider the unintended consequences of a variety of Chinese actors to fully comprehend the nature of interactions between China and Southeast Asia. So, when we think about this, my criticism is that many analysts, whether they are in China or in the West, tend to associate everything happening in Southeast Asia with a design by Beijing. In my opinion, that is not true.
When we look at, let’s say, environmental issues, there was recently a case involving pollution by a Chinese company in Shan State. People in Thailand went to protest in front of the Chinese embassy, demanding that Beijing control its export of these companies. But the reality is that this company was actually an ethnic Chinese company registered in Laos.
People tend to assume that the reason all kinds of environmental problems, or other problems, occur is due to Beijing’s grand strategy. But in reality, many are done by private interests and other actors. That’s why we have to be very careful to trace the consequences back to the causal mechanism, and determine whether something was deliberately done or whether it was an unintended consequence of a variety of non-state actors in the region.
AL: As U.S.-China competition intensifies, Southeast Asian countries are increasingly under pressure to navigate between these two superpowers. Do you think that China’s growing presence is pushing the region closer to Beijing, or is it encouraging an alignment with Washington?
EH: I don’t know. I think that, if you look at the polls, U.S. popularity is declining in Southeast Asia. Overall, absolute numbers indicate that China is more popular in Southeast Asia than the U.S. And second, in terms of relative gains as well, Beijing’s popularity is increasing at the expense of the U.S. These are reported by recent Pew surveys.
But in Southeast Asia, as I said earlier, it is not a uniform region. That means different countries have various foreign policy interests when it comes to U.S.-China competition. In my opinion, the only country that is going to be overwhelmingly pro-U.S. is the Philippines. But that is an exceptional case. This is a country that has a long-term security relationship with the United States. It used to be an American colony, and its political elites are extremely pro-U.S. The country also has ongoing territorial disputes with China. It is therefore unlikely for the Philippines to be on the Chinese side. Impossible, to be sure.
But for all the other countries, I actually don’t see a clear pattern that they would necessarily like to side with the United States against China. We haven’t seen that in reality. The reason is that those countries’ economies, as well as their security needs, are complex. They are heavily dependent on the Chinese market and on Chinese investment. The Philippines is again a very special case: its trade is actually much more oriented toward the U.S. than toward China. It stands out from all the other Southeast Asian countries in terms of its economic relationship with the great powers.
That’s why I would say that, as a region, Southeast Asia is tilting toward China. Recently, for example, you can see publications from Singapore, the work of Yuen Foong Khong and Joseph Liow. They have a project looking at foreign policy choices by Southeast Asian states, and they conclude that the region is tilting very heavily toward China.
AL: China’s relationship with Southeast Asian countries, although not uniform as a region, is often characterized by great-power asymmetry. How much agency do you see Southeast Asian countries wielding in their relationships with China?
EH: I think there’s a tremendous amount of agency. My critique of the conventional literature on China’s influence abroad is the unidirectional treatment of such relations, where China is presented as the only meaningful actor. Decisions are all made by those states based on their own calculations of national interest. Now, this calculation is obviously very complicated. Basically, it’s based on an analysis of your country’s economic conditions, your trade ties, your security ties, and so on. But ultimately, those decisions are made by those states themselves.
So, I don’t see a case where those countries are losing their agency. In fact, in my opinion, the only country that does not have much agency is actually the Philippines, as it is heavily constrained by its security ties with the U.S.
AL: You challenged the common assumption that China simply looks to promote authoritarianism abroad, citing Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia. What about these three countries?
EH: One of the common arguments coming from Washington is that China is promoting authoritarian models of development across the world. I think that thesis is unfounded. First, Beijing works with both authoritarian governments and democracies around the world. They don’t have a particular preference for authoritarian governments over democracies.
Second, these countries don’t become authoritarian due to Chinese influence. The reason why Thailand became authoritarian, or Cambodia became authoritarian, is internal. It’s their own agency. In a way, the coup that happened in Myanmar was because the military wanted it, not because China wanted it. But when it happened, Beijing had to deal with the current military government. So, those are the two reasons I would put forward for saying that there is no such foreign policy for Beijing to promote authoritarianism around the world.
In Thailand’s case, China has become a major talking point between those who support the authoritarian government and those who do not. Thus, the “China model” can be used to justify the military’s continual control of politics because of the presumed political order and economic efficiency that authoritarian rule can bring to Thailand. For the opposition, on the other hand, they take every opportunity to criticize China and to denigrate the government for its authoritarian behavior. As long as the political polarization in Thailand continues, China will continue to be used by both sides of the political spectrum for their own political purposes.
AL: Coming back to this question about overseas Chinese communities, do you think that China’s growing power on the world stage can not only strengthen China’s relationship with Southeast Asia, but also somehow make those ethnic Chinese communities abroad more politically vulnerable?
EH: Possible. In some ways, we know traditionally that Southeast Asia’s historical apprehension is about the political loyalties of the large numbers of ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. This has always been a concern for countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. When China develops, it spreads its power and influence, and there is this concern about whether overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia will become more aligned with Beijing’s interests.
This is a very difficult situation to manage for countries within the region because those people are citizens of Southeast Asian countries, but some of them might have a sentimental attachment to their ancestral homeland. I would say this is a complicated situation for every country with a diaspora population around the world. In that sense, China has tens of millions of overseas Chinese in its diaspora. So, this is a very complicated situation that Beijing has to deal with.
AL: What else do you think is majorly misunderstood about China-Southeast Asia relations?
EH: Yeah. From the U.S. point of view, people tend to focus a lot on the disputes in the South China Sea. They tend to consider these territorial disputes almost as defining the relationship between China and its neighboring states. In my opinion, that’s not necessarily the case.
The reason why the Philippines is heavily consumed by this dispute is that it is securitized with Washington. As I said earlier, the Philippines has a very special relationship with the U.S., which means the Philippines is pushed from different directions. On the one hand, Beijing is testing the U.S. commitment to the Philippines. Many of those low-intensity, non-military means of harassment of Filipino fishermen or coast guards are ways to test how committed the U.S. is to defending the Philippines in its territorial disputes.
On the other hand, there is also an intrinsic interest from the U.S. point of view to use the Philippines to provoke Beijing, to embarrass China. So, I think one of the main tactics for the U.S. is to make use of South China Sea incidents, on the one hand to limit their intensity, but on the other hand to use them to embarrass China internationally, presenting it as a case of bullying by Beijing of a smaller state such as the Philippines.
So, this issue has its own intrinsic logic for being prominent, both from the U.S. and Chinese perspectives. That’s why you will see the South China Sea disputes prominently displayed in Western news sources.