Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia

[These case studies] both demonstrate the scale of Chinese influence in the region as a whole and point out clearly that there is no such single thing as 'Chinese influence,' but rather disparate influences of different kinds of Chinese people and investors in a dynamic region. -- Stevan Harrell, series editor, Studies on Ethnic Groups in China This edition sheds new light on how specific vectors of change are linking millions of Chinese individuals with their neighbors in Southeast Asia, creating opportunities, frictions, and resistance, while concurrently reshaping the region. Through ethnographically rich case studies, we gain important insights into the everyday connections, complex social relationships, and composite livelihoods that intertwine China and its neighbors. -- Sarah Turner, coauthor of Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands This important collection provides tantalizing accounts of how traders, entrepreneurs, workers, teachers, students, and tourists from the PRC are opening up borderlands and variously embedding themselves into nations to the south. The accelerating outflow of PRC people has made 'Chinese' identities-richly ambiguous and multivalent-a critical form of transnational social capital in the midst of local resistances, skepticism, and accommodation in Southeast Asia. -- Aihwa Ong, author of Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian City of Life

This is the first book to focus explicitly on how China’s rise as a major economic and political actor has affected societies in Southeast Asia. It examines how Chinese investors, workers, tourists, bureaucrats, longtime residents, and adventurers interact throughout Southeast Asia. The contributors use case studies to show the scale of Chinese influence in the region and the ways in which various countries mitigate their unequal relationship with China by negotiating asymmetry, circumventing hegemony, and embracing, resisting, or manipulating the terms dictated by Chinese capital.