Economic Partner Selection and Regional Relationship Expansion:Evidence from China's Economic Diplomacy with ASEAN Countries
Amid global changes of a magnitude not seen in a century,China is compre-hensively expanding its foreign strategic layout and accelerating the development of econom-ic partnerships with regions and countries worldwide.When venturing into economic diplo-macy in a certain region,it often proceeds"from point to plane",initially engaging with one or a few countries to forge economic partnerships and then gradually broadening its scope to include other regional players.In examining China's selection of economic partners in expanding its relations with the region of Southeast Asia,two key factors are pivotal:the economic index,comprising mutual trade dependency and regional centrality of the ASEAN country,and the security index,encompassing leader visit frequency with China and diver-gence from US positions.ASEAN countries with higher economic and security indices are more likely to become China's initial economic partners,serving as a gateway for China to strengthen its ties with the region.An empirical analysis,based on investment partnership data between China and ASEAN nations from 1980 to 2002,corroborates these findings.In case studies,the sequence of China's choice of investment partners in Southeast Asia re-flects China's differentiated consideration towards different ASEAN countries,and the in-stances where Thailand and Singapore take the lead as China's investment partners provide evidence to support the conclusion.
international economic cooperationchoice of economic partnersChina-ASEAN cooperationneighborhood diplomacyrelation network of a region
NETL
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万方数据
