China-Asean relations are bigger than mere geopolitics

China-Asean relations are usually described in two ways. One emphasises danger: the South China Sea, US-China rivalry, military pressure and risk of Southeast Asia being pulled into China’s orbit. The other emphasises opportunity: trade, infrastructure, investment, supply chains and shared growth.

Both are true. Neither is enough.

I recently joined a study tour by the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World to Chengdu, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. During the trip, I was struck by how much the relationship between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations lies beyond the usual language of geopolitics. It is being built through food systems, satellites, aircraft, universities, finance, culture, infrastructure, data centres, business networks and regional institutions.

The first lesson came from Chengdu. A visit to a dairy company might seem an unlikely starting point for thinking about China-Asean relations. Yet it spoke directly to a basic Chinese development priority: food security. More than supply, food security for China means quality, safety, standards and consumer trust. The “24-hour milk” we were served was a statement about reliability in a society that still remembers food-safety scandals.

That concern about basic security sat beside China’s technological frontier. Visits to companies involved in the commercial satellite and electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft businesses showed a country trying to shape industries, not just join them. An exchange with a leading university added an intellectual dimension: China studies, Southeast Asian studies, Eurasian studies, technology, security, finance, climate and governance increasingly overlap.

Southeast Asia encounters all of these Chinas: of trade and capital, technology and infrastructure, tourism and students, culture and historical memory, and strategic pressure. None of this began with the Belt and Road Initiative or US-China rivalry. It rests on older circuits of trade, migration, education, family networks and cultural familiarity that make China both more intimate and politically sensitive in Southeast Asia than most external powers.