CHAIRPERSON
Dr Yang Yang, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
ABSTRACT
International relations scholarship and the popular media tend to portray China as a great power with hegemonic designs for Southeast Asia. Yet there is no such a great power like China that is still a developing country with variegated levels of internal development and chunks of population still live in relative poverty. Defining China as an unconventional great power, this paper examines the varieties of Chinese interactions/influences in Southeast Asia in their everyday forms, ranging from Chinese tourists/tourism operations in Thailand, cross-border trade of agricultural products with Myanmar, to casinos and Chinese gangs in Cambodia. It argues that the responses to the Chinese presence in Southeast Asia also differ from the typical global south/north division that previous and other contemporary great powers tend to be associated with.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Enze Han is Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include ethnic politics in China, China’s relations with Southeast Asia, and the politics of state formation in the borderland area between China, Myanmar and Thailand. Previously he was Senior Lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, University of London. He was also a Friends Founders’ Circle Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA, 2015-16. In 2020, he will be Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia at Stanford University and National University of Singapore.
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