China's Economic Diplomacy Towards ASEAN Countries

As an increasingly important concept of international relations,Economic Diplomacy is a significant strategic practice in the course of inter-state relations.Southeast Asia is regarded as an important peripheral region for China to carry out economic diplomacy.With considerable economic development,China has actively implemented economic diplomacy with ASEAN member countries through trade,investment,and aid,which achieved certain positive results.However,at the same time,the intensive competition among major powers in Southeast Asia brings challenges to China's economic diplomacy.This paper discusses and evaluates China's trade diplomacy,investment diplomacy,and aid diplomacy in Southeast Asia on the basis of summarizing key concepts and development trends of Economic Diplomacy.The practices mentioned above have effectively promoted the economic development of China and ASEAN member countries,but there are different views in academia as to whether China's economic diplomacy has correspondingly strengthened its political influence in Southeast Asia.Therefore,this study uses fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to empirically examine the interaction between economic dependence and bilateral political relations between China and the ten ASEAN member countries.Results show that political relations development is complicated and is hard to be fully explained with any single theory such as economic dependence,major powers competition,political regime difference,and threat perception.Meanwhile,economic dependence does not constitute a necessary condition for bilateral political relations evolution;China is best able to exert political influence over countries that have little security cooperation with the United States.Therefore,it is necessary to dialectically view the political effectiveness of China's economic diplomacy in Southeast Asia.In the future,China should adjust its economic diplomacy practices with different ASEAN member countries,give play to the combined advantages of trade,investment,and aid,as well as strive to resolve misunderstandings and prejudices brought by political regime difference and “China threat” theory,so as to inject new impetus into the strategic partnership between China and ASEAN member countries.