Geo-economic contestation over Southeast Asia in the era of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping

Over the past decade, observers and scholars of international relations have begun to focus on intensifying ‘geoeconomic’ competition and ‘weaponized interdependence’, with close attention to the deepening rivalry between China and the United States. Within this broader, global trend, Southeast Asia has loomed large as a crucial arena of geoeconomic contestation, especially between China, the United States, and Japan in particular. Such contestation has ranged from major transportation infrastructure megaprojects to transoceanic submarine fibre-optic cable links to semiconductor supply chains, with the incoming Trump Administration promising to escalate the ongoing ‘chip war’ and existing tariffs on Chinese goods into an even broader and deeper trade dispute.

Against this backdrop, the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre’s annual Southeast Asia Forum in 2025 brings together leading specialists from across the world to discuss the implications of global trends and ongoing geoeconomic contestation for Southeast Asian economies, polities, and societies.

Forum schedule

9:15am-9:30am: Welcome and opening remarks by John T. Sidel 

9:30am-10:30am: Southeast Asia and China: Investing in Regime Security, Evelyn Goh (Australian National University)

Since the 1990s, Southeast Asia's growing economic linkages and dependence on China for investment in infrastructure and industry have generated political opportunities and strategic concerns in equal measure. Lively debates about the extent of China’s increasing impacts on Southeast Asian politics and societies are often premised on the assumption that such investment creates influence for China. However, there remains less comparative and empirical knowledge about how Southeast Asian elites interpret rising dependency on Chinese investment, and how growing Chinese investments change the calculus for key domestic political stakeholders. 

This keynote lecture examines the interactions between very large Chinese investments and regime security dynamics in the ten ASEAN countries during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, providing a region-wide analysis. It outlines a ‘regime security’ framework for studying the connections between the level and character of such investment, and China's growing significance and influence in these countries. It then analyses how regime security operates as a vital element of domestic politics in Southeast Asian countries that helps determine the type and effectiveness of Chinese influence through investment. Taking into account the large variation in domestic political contexts across these ten diverse countries, it employs an original typology of five key types of domestic mediations of Chinese investment on regime security in the region, offering key illustrations from Southeast Asian states for each type.

10:45am-12:15pm: Chips war? Geopolitics and the restructuring of semiconductor global production networks in Southeast Asia, Henry Wai-chung Yeung (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

This presentation focuses on the intensified geopolitical contest between the United States and China and its ramification for a critically important high-tech industry – semiconductors. I argue that semiconductor global production networks have now been highly politicized through state-led industrial policy and technology restrictions, resembling a kind of “chips war” between national governments. In this highly capital-intensive industry, governance and power dynamics are manifested differently from many other industries due to its very complex technology regimes, production network ecosystems, and, more recently, geopolitical imperatives and changing state-business relationships. While some of these critical dynamics had been in play ahead of the 2020s in mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia, their intensity and significance have become far more apparent by the mid-2020s. I examine their most significant implications for regional development in Southeast Asian economies up to the late 2020s and the need for strategic partnership with technology leaders towards building national and regional resilience in the United States, Western Europe, and East Asia. I end the discussion with some relevant future research agendas on technology, resilience, and politics for the interdisciplinary studies of global production networks and global value chains.

2-3:30pm: The Geoeconomics of Infrastructure Projects in Southeast Asia, Selina Ho (National University of Singapore)

According to the Asian Development Bank, Southeast Asia needs to invest US$2.8 trillion a year from 2023 to 2030 to construct new infrastructure in order to maintain economic growth, reduce poverty, and combat climate change impact. Rapid population growth, urbanization and economic growth in the region have resulted in a widening investment gap. China plays a key role in plugging this gap. It has significantly invested in infrastructure projects, particularly roads, highways, railways, ports, and telecommunications, across Southeast Asia through its Belt and Road Initiative. Increasingly, Southeast Asia has also become the target destination for China’s green-field investments due to the region’s vast potential in renewable energy and critical minerals. However, it is not the only investor in infrastructure initiatives in the region. Japan, for instance, has long been a major investor in transport infrastructure in the region. Other notable investors hail from South Korea, India, and European Union countries as well as multilateral organizations like the ADB. These other powers have history and also contemporary interactions with Southeast Asia that bear on today’s connectivity projects in Southeast Asia. Are they credible alternatives or supplements to China’s initiatives? What determines the choices that Southeast Asian countries make? This paper argues that the legitimating narratives of elites and the degree of domestic contestation determine how Southeast Asian countries respond to Chinese overtures and initiatives.

3:45-5:15pm: The Paradox of Megaprojects: How Incumbents and their Chinese Partners Shape the Politics of Southeast Asia’s Illiberal Democracies, Alvin Camba (Association of Universities, Inc.)

This presentation examines how Chinese megaprojects have impacted the political dynamics of illiberal democracies—nations that exhibit democratic features but suffer from weak institutions—particularly when these projects are implemented during times of heightened political competition. It argues that incumbents can strategically use these projects to strengthen their political or economic standing, leveraging them as external resources at critical moments. These projects not only shape the fate of incumbents and their opponents but also influence the broader political trajectory of their countries. The analysis delves into the evolving political landscape driven by the expansion of Chinese megaprojects. Incumbents may use these projects to consolidate power by distributing them among loyalists or, alternatively, allocate them to potential defectors to prevent political fragmentation. This decision results in two distinct political modes. First is the mode of Contestation. When incumbents allocate Chinese projects to a select group of loyalists, they consolidate power but risk alienating elites and mobilizing opposition. This centralization can trigger elite defections and mass protests, ultimately leading to regime collapse, a temporary weakening of China’s influence, and a strengthening of democratic institutions. Second is the mode of enmeshment. When incumbents distribute Chinese projects more broadly, including to potential defectors, they create a network of entanglement within the regime. This fosters coalition stability and strengthens centralized power, sustaining the political order until domestic transitions intensify political competition. The incumbent's approach to project allocation interacts with the country's party system, shaping the development impact of Chinese projects, the diffusion of Chinese influence, and the programmatic ideals of the political parties. Through an in-depth examination of Chinese megaprojects and their impact under the administrations of Arroyo and Duterte in the Philippines, Najib in Malaysia, and Jokowi in Indonesia, the project presents extensive empirical evidence. This includes approximately 300 interviews with elites and non-elites, elite ethnography, and government and private sector documents.

5:15-5:30pm: Closing remarks by John T. Sidel  

Meet our speakers and chair: 

Evelyn Goh is the Shedden Professor of Strategic Policy Studies at the Australian National University, where she is also Research Director at the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre. She has published widely on U.S.-China relations and diplomatic history, regional security order in East Asia, Southeast Asian strategies towards great powers, and environmental security. These include The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy and Transition in Post-Cold War East Asia (Oxford University Press, 2013); ‘Great Powers and Hierarchical Order in Southeast Asia: Analyzing Regional Security Strategies’, International Security 32:3 (Winter 2007/8):113-57; and Constructing the US Rapprochement with China, 1961-1974 (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Her most recent edited volume is Rising China’s Influence in Developing Asia (Oxford University Press, 2016), and her latest book (co-authored with Barry Buzan) is Re-thinking Sino-Japanese Alienation: History Problems and Historical Opportunities (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Henry Wai-chung Yeung received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester in 1995. He had served as Distinguished Professor (and Professor of Economic Geography since 2005) at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, until 31 December 2024. In January 2025, he took up the Choh-Ming Li Professorship at the Department of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests cover broadly theories and the geography of transnational corporations, global production networks and global value chains, East Asian firms and developmental states in the global economy. He is the recipient of multiple research awards, including the 2022 Sir Peter Hall Award for Lifetime Contribution by the Regional Studies Association in the UK, the 2018 Distinguished Scholarship Honors by the American Association of Geographers, and the 2017 Murchison Award by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), UK. He has published 7 monographs and 1 textbook (3 editions), 7 edited books, 110 journal articles, and 50 book chapters. His most recent books are Theory and Explanation in Geography (RGS-IBG Book Series, Wiley, September 2023), Interconnected Worlds: Global Electronics and Production Networks in East Asia (Innovation and Technology in the World Economy Series, Stanford University Press, June 2022), Strategic Coupling: East Asian Industrial Transformation in the New Global Economy (Cornell Studies in Political Economy Series, Cornell University Press, 2016), and Global Production Networks: Theorizing Economic Development in an Interconnected World (with Neil Coe, Oxford University Press, 2015). For over two decades since 2001, he has been a co-editor of two top journals in Geography – Economic Geography and Environment and Planning A. He is also past editor of Review of International Political Economy (2004-2013) and serves on the editorial boards of 18 other journals.

Selina Ho is Associate Professor in International Affairs and Co-Director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. She researches Chinese politics and foreign policy, with a focus on how China wields power and influence via infrastructure and water disputes in Southeast Asia and South Asia. Selina is the author of Thirsty Cities: Social Contracts and Public Goods Provision in China and India (Cambridge University Press, 2019), co-author of Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia (University of California Press, 2020), and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations (2020). She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, including International Affairs, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Journal of Contemporary China, among others. Selina received her doctorate from The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. 

Alvin Camba is a critical materials specialist at the Association of Universities, Inc., where he is part of a $30 million U.S. Department of Defense-funded project on critical resources and U.S. supply chains. He is also a faculty affiliate at the Center for International Environment & Resource Policy and the Climate Policy Lab at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. Dr. Camba holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Johns Hopkins University and has received multiple best research paper awards from academic organizations. His work has been published in leading development and political economy journals. Dr. Camba has briefed or presented at the US-China Commission, EU DG for Environment, The World Bank, the US State Department, AidData, and various US intelligence agencies.

John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Professor Sidel received his BA and MA from Yale University and his PhD from Cornell University. He is the author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (1999), Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Trajectories (2000), Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (2006), The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia: A Reassessment (2007), Thinking and Working Politically in Development: Coalitions for Change in the Philippines (2020, with Jaime Faustino) and Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia (2021).

More about this event:

The Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre (@LSESEAC) is a multidisciplinary Research Centre of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Building on the School’s deep academic and historical connections with Southeast Asia, SEAC seeks to foster world-leading academic research focused on the region’s cultural, economic, political, religious, and social landscapes, drawing on the LSE’s signature strengths in the social sciences, history, and law.

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