In this multi-disciplinary and multi-sited volume, the authors challenge reductionist and oversimplifying approaches to understanding China's engagement with Southeast Asia. Productively viewing these interactions through a "e;resource lens"e;, the editor has transcended disciplinary and area studies divides in order to assemble a dynamic and diverse group of scholars with extensive experience across Southeast Asia and in China, all while bringing together perspectives from resource economics, policy analysis, international relations, human geography, political ecology, history, sociology and anthropology. The result is an important collection that not only offers empirically detailed studies of Chinese energy and resource investments in Southeast Asia, but which attends to the complex and often ambivalent ways in which such investments have become both a source of anxiety and aspiration for different stakeholders in the region.

"In this fascinating multi-disciplinary and multi-sited volume, the authors challenge reductionist and oversimplifying approaches to understanding China's engagement with Southeast Asia. Productively viewing these interactions through a "resource lens", the editor has transcended disciplinary and area studies divides in order to assemble a dynamic and diverse group of scholars with extensive experience across Southeast Asia and in China, all while bringing together perspectives from resource economics, policy analysis, international relations, human geography, political ecology, history, sociology and anthropology. The result is an important collection that not only offers empirically detailed studies of Chinese energy and resource investments in Southeast Asia, but which attends to the complex and often ambivalent ways in which such investments have become both a source of anxiety and aspiration for different stakeholders in the region. It is essential reading for scholars seeking to understand the diverse contours of Chinese investment in Southeast Asia"-- Erik Harms, Department of Anthropology, Yale University

This text analyzes the dramatic shifts in Chinese Communist Party economic policy during the mid to late 1950s which eventually resulted in 30 to 45 million deaths through starvation as a result of the failed policies of the Great Leap Forward. Teiwes examines both the substance and the process of economic policy-making in that period, explaining how the rational policies of opposing rash advance in 1956-57 gave way to the fanciful policies of the Great Leap, and assessing responsibility for the failure to adjust adequately those policies even as signs of disaster began to reach higher level decision makers. In telling this story, Teiwes focuses on key participants in the process throughout both "rational" and "utopian" phases - Mao, other top leaders, central economic bureaucracies and local party leaders. The analysis rejects both of the existing influential explanations in the field, the long dominant power politics approach focusing on alleged clashes within the top leadership, and David Bachman's recent institutional interpretation of the origins of the Great Leap. Instead, this study presents a detailed picture of an exceptionally Mao-dominated process, where no other actor challenged his position, where the boldest step any actor took was to try and influence his preferences, and where the system in effect became paralyzed while Mao kept changing signals as disaster unfolded.

Tells the story of China's struggles to overcome new risks and endure the global backlash against its assertive reach. Combining on-the-ground reportage with analysis, Luke Patey argues that China's predatory economic agenda, headstrong diplomacy, and military expansion undermine its global ambitions to dominate the global economy and world affairs

Will the nations of Southeast Asia maintain their strategic autonomy, or are they destined to become a subservient periphery of China? This book’s expert authors address this pressing question in multiple contexts. What clues to the future lie in the modern history of Sino-Southeast Asian relations? How economically dependent on China has the region already become? What do Southeast Asians think of China? Does Beijing view the region in proprietary terms as its own backyard? How has the relative absence, distance, and indifference of the United States affected the balance of influence between the US and China in Southeast Asia? The book also explores China’s moves and Southeast Asia’s responses to them. Does China’s Maritime Silk Road through Southeast Asia herald a Pax Sinica across the region? How should China’s expansionary acts in the South China Sea be understood? How have Southeast Asian states such as Vietnam and the Philippines responded? How does Singapore’s China strategy compare with Indonesia’s? How relevant is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations? To what extent has China tried to persuade the “overseas Chinese” in Southeast Asia to identify with “'the motherland” and support its aims? How are China’s deep involvements in Cambodia and Laos affecting the economies and policies of those countries? “This rich collection,” writes renowned author-journalist Nayan Chanda, answers these and other questions while offering “fresh insights” and “new information and analyses” to explain Southeast Asia’s relations with China.