From Wealth To Power: On China’s Geo-economical Strength And Geopolitical Influences In Southeast Asia

Since the beginning of 21 st century, although the economic public goods supplied by China in Southeast Asia are ever increasing, it does not deliver on the geopolitical return. By contrast, countries in Southeast Asia worry about China’s strategies, politics and security day by day. And it becomes a binary oppositions formed between political and economic structure.Since China’s geo-economical power don’t match its geopolitical influence in Southeast Asia, the thesis points out that the interactions between geopolitics and geoeconomics are not always positive. In fact, the interactions could be three paths: the positive one, the negative one and the parallel one. In the early stage when the division between geopolitics and geo-economics was not that specific, the two remained overlapping, most of the interactions were positive. With the importance of geoeconomy growing, the interaction presented parallel development. While with the growing transfer of global power, the structure of the comparative advantage of capabilities among big powers became more obvious, and the division between geopolitics and geo-economics increased. The negative path began impacting the large powers’ policy of offering global public goods, and particularly pursuing the larger international influence by discovering the transfer mechanism of the two.The relationship between China and Southeast Asia has also experienced a similar development stage: the monorail geopolitical influence pattern kept by China in Southeast Asia during the Cold War has changed into parallel development of geopolitics and geo-economics because of the rise of China after the Cold War. The development of geopolitics and geo-economics between China and Southeast Asia goes to the wrong track concerning the rise of China in the 2010 s, resulting in a dual structure of “the economy relies on China and security relies on the USA”. To further investigate the root cause and responsive approaches of this dual structure, this paper tries to find an effective mechanism for China to turn its rising geo-economical power into enduring geopolitical influence through qualitative analysis combining theory and history, quantitative analysis on the diplomatic similarity between China and Southeast Asian countries, and American experiences on that. This paper argues that moral appeal, moral advocacy and institution building are the core elements of this transformation mechanism.