South-East Asia learns how to deal with China

A DECADE AGO Xi Jinping, China’s leader, declared his intention to make a world-girdling web of infrastructure China’s gift to the planet. From the start, South-East Asia was to serve as a—perhaps the—main focus of what came to be called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The region of 690m people was China’s backyard. South-East Asia needed trillions of dollars of infrastructure and other development. China-centred supply chains increasingly ran through the ten-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Some 60m-70m ethnic-Chinese citizens of South-East Asia, many of them successful businessmen, could help China’s mission.