SOAS Research Online

Abstract

While outward FDI inflows have increased since 2008, the volume of Southeast Asia’s exports to China has slowed down, prompting discussion about whether this will affect Southeast Asia’s growth. This article empirically tests China’s impact on Southeast Asia’s growth using a nonlinear framework, and finds that economic linkages between Southeast Asia and China have been changing since the mid-1990s, especially during the 1997 and 2008 financial crises and the 2012 bilateral diplomatic change; that FDI is more important to economic growth than exports across Southeast Asia; and that there is no industrial technology gap between Southeast Asia and China.