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China's Global South Strategy in the Mekong Region in Geopolitical Implications, Economic Prospects, and Challenge: The Dragon's Reach Into Southern Arc

China's Global South Strategy in the Mekong Region in Geopolitical Implications, Economic Prospects, and Challenge: The Dragon's Reach Into Southern Arc
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Author(s): Tin Maung Htwe (Chiang Mai University, Thailand)
Copyright: 2025
Pages: 34
Source title: Implications, Prospects, and Challenges in China’s Global South Strategy
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Enayatollah Yazdani (Sun Yat-sen University, China)
DOI: 10.4018/979-8-3373-0938-5.ch006

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Abstract

This chapter argues that China's engagement in mainland Southeast Asia illustrates a new mode of hegemony: one that substitutes formal empire with economic corridors and strategic interdependence. China's rise as a global power is reshaping the political economy of the Global South, and the Mekong region now stands as a revealing case of this transformation. Through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC), Beijing has fused infrastructure, influence, and ideology into a model of state-led development that promises modernization, but at the cost of sovereignty. In the absence of robust institutional buffers, Chinese investments have embedded asymmetric relationships that erode state autonomy and fragment regional coherence in Mekong Region.

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