Reassessing China’s economic power in Southeast Asia during the 2010 s: insights from the nexus of FDI-driven manufacturing and GVC trade

Southeast Asia’s primary foreign policy challenge amid the intensifying US-China rivalry is commonly framed as a pursuit of neutrality, which is premised on the region’s economic dependence on China and its security reliance on the USA. While widely accepted, the economic side of this framing largely rests on the assumption that China’s economic dominance in the region is indisputable. This article challenges this assumption by reassessing China’s role in Southeast Asia’s manufacturing sector during the 2010s. Empirical evidence shows that, while China was the region’s dominant supplier at the time, its role as an investor with key decision-making power in production networks remained limited. In this article, to better make sense of these results, a typology of sourcing relations centered on the alignment between foreign assemblers and their suppliers was developed, drawn from the FDI and GVC approaches. Two case studies illustrate key outcome categories involving Thailand and Vietnam. The findings suggest that China's economic position in SE Asia during the 2010s was more limited than commonly assumed, though this may be changing with the emergence of new technologies.