Yunnan: China’s bridge to South and Southeast Asia
China is revisiting its periphery with a new, localized approach to regional multilateralism. China is revisiting the importance of its peripheries for engaging with its neighbors according to its ambitious economic plans. Beijing’s new approach is a top-down regulatory regionalism in exploring economic engagement with the neighborhood, particularly Southeast Asia and South Asia. Most notably, China is strategically positioning Yunnan province as its bridge to Southeast Asia and South Asia, managing the center-periphery bond by integrating Yunnan’s economy with the ASEAN and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation members. Yunnan, as a peripheral province, has not received the center’s economic attention in the past and historically had indifferent relations with central China. But the combination of geography, natural resources, and the political realities in the Asia-Pacific has turned China’s political attention to this southwestern province.
