Events

China’s rapid rise in the last few decades has (re)shaped its international relationships with many countries through trade and investment, especially in Southeast Asia where the Chinese engagement has arguably been the most intensified. In recent years, popular media and academic scholarship have largely focused on China’s presence in Southeast Asia, especially the Chinese government’s recent “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). Such BRI connections matter for Southeast Asia in current and future contexts, but it is also issues beyond simply recent BRI associated developments that has seen Southeast Asia being pushed in uncertain and new directions with its engagement with China. Communities and states in SEA have to ‘feel’ their way forward in the midst of the Chinese ‘currents’ with alternative imaginaries (therefore “Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones”).

This workshop focuses on how both recent intensification and various historical sources (post-World War II) contribute to producing “alternative imaginaries” that are different from and slightly outside BRI-related narratives in Southeast Asia. We will unpack these processes of producing these alternative imaginaries in times and spaces that are not directly associated with the BRI and their implications to contemporary and potentially future socio-economic, cultural and political dynamics in Southeast Asia.

The workshop will focus on alternative ways of interpreting and engaging various Chinese activities from individuals to institutions at the local, bilateral and regional (such as ASEAN with China) levels in both mainland and island Southeast Asia. The topics covered are in the following areas:

• Chinese foreign policies and diplomacy engagement (Tracks I and II) in Southeast Asia from the Cold War period till present
• Economic development in special economic zones (SEZs), cross-border trade, real estate development, infrastructural mega-projects
• Transnational religious networks, cultural heritage, and tourism development
• Migration between China and Southeast Asia and the impact of migrant communities on shaping local ethnic and cultural identities and vice versa.
• Ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups in Southeast Asia and their engagement of and resistance to Chinese development in their daily lives.   

WORKSHOP CONVENORS

Dr Yang Yang | Postdoctoral Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
Dr Shaun Lin | Max Weber Foundation-NUS Research Fellow, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar has been sent out to registered attendees.
Please write to valerie.yeo@nus.edu.sg, if you would like to attend the event.