On 22 May 2014, Thai army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha staged a military coup — two days earlier he had declared martial law for the entire territory of the kingdom. The junta, renamed the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), abolished the 2007 constitution and replaced it with an interim constitution banning political parties and elections. In April 2015 it lifted martial law only to replace it with NCPO Order 3/2015 prohibiting gatherings of more than five people.

Upon seizing power the NCPO had promised to return the country to democracy according to a roadmap stipulating for the drafting of a new constitution and the organization of elections. Following a referendum in August 2016, the newly crowned King Vajiralongkorn, who had ascended to the throne in December 2016, promulgated a new “permanent” constitution in April 2017. Elections were then planned for November 2018, which were later delayed to February then March 2019. In 2018, in preparation for the upcoming election, the military government lifted some of its restrictions on political activities. It allowed the registration of political parties in March and lifted the ban on political gatherings in December, after more than four years under martial law and NCPO Order 3/2015. In both cases, Prayuth used his absolute powers under Article 44 of the 2014 interim constitution to lift his previous orders.

The general election planned for 2019 will certainly not “return” democracy to Thailand. The planning and organization of elections following a military takeover is part of a regular pattern in Thailand, and has been called the “vicious cycle of Thai politics” (wongchon ubat). Each cycle starts and ends in a military coup. First a coup is staged, with martial law declared and the constitution abolished. A short interim constitution banning both political parties and elections is promulgated instead. The interim constitution is in turn followed by a permanent constitution providing for elections, only to lead to a further crisis and a military or judicialmilitary coup, installing a military government. In 2006, the democratically elected leader Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted by a military coup, the 1997 constitution abolished and replaced with the 2006 interim constitution, followed by the permanent 2007 constitution adopted by referendum. Elections were held in December 2007, only for the subsequent government of Samak Sundaravej to be dismissed by the Constitutional Court in 2008.

Cambodia in 2018 was marked by a number of major setbacks in some areas and successes in others. On the political front, the senate and parliamentary elections resulted in the Cambodian People's Party's monopolization of power within the bicameral legislature. Prime Minister Hun Sen continued to tighten his grip on power by taking steps to control state institutions, most notably the armed forces, the judiciary, and the party system. Human rights in the country continued to face an uphill battle, although the CPP government took a few small positive steps towards the end of the year by reversing its tight restrictions on the opposition and political rights. All these negative developments occurred despite positive signs of socio-economic development and international pressure from some major countries on which Cambodia has long depended for economic growth. Developed countries like the United States and those in Europe threatened to impose sanctions on Cambodia because of the election results, but the Hun Sen government did little to address their concerns about the political and human rights situation.

The State and Political Society

The multiparty system that was introduced in Cambodia in 1993 through the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements and the intervention of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia is now dictated by the CPP, which allows weak and fragile opposition parties to exist without any prospects of them gaining enough seats to form a new government.

The year 2018 was noteworthy in the sense that two major elections for the bicameral legislature — the Senate and the National Assembly — led to the CPP's total dominance, and further marked a move away from a hegemonic-party system to the beginning of a one-party state. The election for the Senate was held on 25 February, after having been postponed from 14 January 2018, and the results left the CPP with all 58 elected seats, taking 12 seats away from the opposition. The CPP also captured all 125 seats in the National Assembly, having collected 4,889,113 votes, leaving the other nineteen political parties without a single seat. Banned in November 2017 by the Supreme Court from competing in the two elections, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which won 55 out of 123 seats in the 2013 elections, was not even among the nineteen parties that competed with the CPP.

Toxic is the Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year for 2018. It is a word that captures the mood of our time, evidenced by the 45 per cent spike in frequency of people who looked up the term. Used in tandem with the word masculinity, toxic has served as descriptor to emphasize the physical harm, emotional damage and lethal effects of patriarchal power.

The same word can summarize the year 2018 for the Philippines. Beyond President Rodrigo Duterte's overt displays of toxic masculinity is a discernible pattern of his administration's aggressive attacks against the integrity of democratic institutions. From attempting to jail opposition figures to forging controversial deals with China that place the Philippines’ sovereignty at risk, the regime has demonstrated the extent to which it is willing to breach the boundaries of state power while evading accountability.

This chapter analyses the Philippines in 2018 around the three themes of toxic politics, toxic policies and toxic deals. Each of these themes focuses on specific issues that will draw attention to broader patterns of Duterte's rule, which, as this chapter argues, has assumed a toxic quality for democratic life. Toxic politics focuses on issues of press freedom and the ouster of the Supreme Court chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. Toxic policies examines how Duterte's iron-fisted approach to governance shaped the conduct of the Boracay island shutdown and Marawi rehabilitation. Finally, toxic deals focuses on Chinese investment and new tax laws.

By identifying these issues, this chapter does not intend to portray a bleak future for Philippine democracy. The final part of the chapter demonstrates how the public has responded to this political trajectory, and prompts reflection on where the nation may be headed.

Democracy's Autoimmune Disease

There has always been a danger that the populist President Duterte would have a toxic effect on Philippine democracy. Populism, as political theorist Simon Tormey puts it, is a pharmakon, “a powerful substance intended to make someone better, but which might end up killing him or her”. There is no way to know the outcome in advance, he argues, for the toxicity of populism “depends on the dosage and receptivity of the body”.

In August 2016, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy” (FOIPs) at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) held in Kenya. Since then, many researchers, journalists and policymakers have discussed what the FOIP Strategy, and the broader concept of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP), exactly means.

For some, FOIPs is essentially an exclusive concept that views China as “a hostile existential threat to regional (and global) order, prosperity, and Western interests”. Such a view tends to see Abe's FOIPs primarily as a geopolitical strategy aimed at countering Chinese power and influence by creating a maritime coalition with regional democracies, represented by the Quadrilateral Security Cooperation (Quad) between Japan, Australia, India and the United States. The FOIPs is also commonly seen as a competitor or “geoeconomic” strategy against China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by providing the region with alternatives to BRI projects.

For others, however, FOIPs is an inclusive concept that ultimately aims to incorporate China and other powers in an inclusive political and economic system in the Indo-Pacific. Such a view, often stressed by the Japanese government and its officials, tends to dismiss the geopolitical aspect of FOIPs and argues that FOIPs is a comprehensive framework or “vision” for Japanese regional policies, mostly its economic and development cooperation such as infrastructure development and support for regional connectivity. This kind of view also stresses the cooperative, as well as the competitive, aspects of FOIPs by pointing out many overlaps or mutual complementarities, especially in the “third party cooperation”, between FOIPs and BRI. According to this line of argument, understanding FOIPs simply as a “counter-China strategy” is a stunted and short-sighted view which ignores the fact that the concept was developed as a response to the long-term shift in the centre of gravity of the global economy from Western Europe to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

As such, there are almost opposite views over what FOIPs means. Which view explains the reality of FOIPs more accurately? With this question in mind, the chapter first examines why FOIPs has become an important strategic concept for Japan.

This chapter documents the impact of Chinese capitalism on the Mekong region's agricultural sector in Laos based on a survey of the Chinese-owned banana plantations near the Laotian border town of Houy Xai. It will demonstrate how the high demand for bananas in China and unregulated rent capitalism have made it possible for small and medium Chinese banana plantations operating in the Thai- Lao border areas to compete successfully with larger companies. However, the small-scale and short-term land acquisitions and the practice of shifting plantation by the Chinese companies have resulted in large-scale, long-term environmental and health impacts on local lives and livelihoods.

The “Shifting Plantation” System

In her study of the banana industry in the Caribbean, Barbara Welch divides the global banana trade into four independent subsystems, in the North Atlantic, the Western Pacific, Southern Africa and Southeastern South America. In terms of production, however, there are three identifiable forms: the large plantation system, the family farm, and the small shifting plantation system.

The banana is highly perishable, with a short period of time between its edible maturation and time of spoilage. While most major markets lie in the temperate zones, cultivation is confined to tropical areas. The banana industry — in terms of production, logistics and marketing — requires high levels of efficient business organization. The geography of the banana industry contributed to the emergence of the large plantation system in Latin America or what James Wiley calls the “Banana Empire”. This type of organization began with the founding of the United Fruit Company in 1899. Since then, the banana industry in Latin America has been controlled by trans-national companies such as United Fruit, Del Monte, Dole, and Chiquita, among others. From the beginning, land acquisition was one of the paramount goals of these companies. The empire-building task of setting up plantations required huge investments in forest clearing, irrigation techniques, labour management and logistics. During the industry's incipient stage, the capital required to accomplish these herculean tasks was only available in the North. Consequently, control over the banana industry — land, railroad and shipping — resided in the consuming regions rather than the producing regions.

The year 2018 was an eventful one for Southeast Asia, with many of its developments likely to shape those in 2019 and beyond. In 2018, the United States’ policy towards China, and by extension towards the region more broadly, crystallized into one of full-spectrum major power rivalry. The broader Indo-Pacific regional strategic concept is gradually replacing the long-standing Asia-Pacific one. It could well be that 2018 is seen as the year that the post–Cold War Asia- Pacific era ended.

There was better news on the regional economic front. The inelegantly named Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) was signed by eleven states and ratified by seven, while the ASEAN-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations experienced what in diplomatic language is termed “substantial progress”.

A number of domestic developments in the eleven states of Southeast Asia also had wider regional implications. The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar demonstrated the limits of the ASEAN Way, as noted by Leszek Buszynski in his chapter on regional security. Malaysia's surprise election result and first change of government by the ballot box countered the narrative about the decline of democracy in Southeast Asia and brought Dr Mahathir back on to the regional scene. In the Philippines, the passage of the Bangsamoro Organic Law offers the best chance of addressing the long-running Moro insurgency in Muslim Mindanao and the safe haven this conflict has provided for local and regional terrorists.

The twenty-four chapters of Southeast Asia Affairs 2019, written by twentynine authors, reflect the diversity within the eleven countries that make up the region, and they provide timely analysis of the current political, economic and social developments at the regional level and in each country. Four themes in particular connect a large number of these chapters and reflect structural, rather than temporary, factors that will help determine the trajectories of the region as a whole and those of its eleven states for the foreseeable future.

The Indo-Pacific

The regional section of this edition features four shorter pieces looking at the development of the Indo-Pacific regional security concept in the United States, Japan, India and Australia. Brian Harding's contribution on the United States focuses on the role of strategic rivalry with China. Tomohiko Satake for Japan and Rory Medcalf for Australia address directly Southeast Asian and ASEAN's concerns with the Indo-Pacific, particularly the place of ASEAN in the concept.

Myanmar has been experiencing less peaks than troughs in its transformation after Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which won a landslide victory in the November 2015 polls, took office in 2016. The NLD inherited deep-seated legacies and prejudices, as well as a unique blend of political identity entrenched over seventy years of civil war. From 2016's promise of being an annus mirabilis under a democratically elected government, Myanmar's fledgling democracy experienced several challenges, particularly in getting the economy back on track amidst ongoing negotiations on power- and resource-sharing with ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), with whom the NLD's predecessor administration had engaged in a nationwide ceasefire process.

The years 2017 and 2018 were something of anni horribiles for the country. Foremost among the litany of disappointments decried by critics has been the NLD government's — and particularly Daw Suu's — reluctance to explicitly condemn violence against the Rohingya in the wake of a disproportionate response by Myanmar's armed forces, the Tatmadaw, to an armed insurgency in August 2017. The Tatmadaw's operations in the northern part of Myanmar's Rakhine State bordering Bangladesh were reported to have included rape, torture, and burning of villages, causing the largest exodus to date of some 700,000 Rohingya residing in Myanmar across the border to Bangladesh. Domestic support for Daw Suu strengthened in proportion to the mounting international advocacy for human rights and humanitarian principles towards a community with whom many people in Myanmar feel no affinity. Within Myanmar, the Tatmadaw wields a constitutional veto as well as a considerable functional dominance in defence, home affairs and border affairs. The Tatmadaw, with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing at its helm, is reportedly unhappy with this insinuated scapegoat role. Daw Suu and her cabinet members have continued the emphasis on national security when discussing the issue at home and abroad.

The NLD government has also acknowledged the effects of the international response on the country's economy. Speaking at the Myanmar Investment Forum organized by the Singapore Institute for International Affairs in September 2018, Aung Naing Oo, the head of Myanmar's Department for Investments and Company Administration, frankly admitted having “totally underestimated” the economic impact of the Rohingya issue, and that foreign direct investment (FDI) had declined in the two years since November 2016 when the crisis first erupted.

The Evolution of Vietnamese Politics

The state of Vietnamese politics since the reunification of the country in 1975 has been evolving as the triumph, crisis, and course correction of first a totalitarian state and then a rent-seeking state. During the period from 1975 to 1986, the triumphant Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) imposed a totalitarian state that planned everything and forced its programmes on the population. The totalitarian state, however, failed miserably to motivate people to work and soon plunged into a severe crisis. The death of party chief Le Duan and the election of Truong Chinh as general secretary of the CPV in 1986 paved the way for a sweeping correction of the totalitarian state. Known as doi moi, or “renovation”, this correction course was focused on economic reform while delaying political reform, which was watered down to mere “administrative reform”. Doi moi mainly consisted of the gradual introduction of the free market and the selective loosening of totalitarian politics. By the mid-1990s, this hybrid had succeeded in bringing the country out of the grave economic crisis and putting it on a rapid growth path, while maintaining CPV rule and breaking out of international isolation.

As this triple success made doi moi a long-term principle of Vietnamese politics, the hybrid also changed the nature of the Vietnamese state. Whereas the mixture of authoritarianism and capitalism in the “Asian tigers” gave rise to developmental states, the marriage of totalitarianism and commercialism in Vietnam resulted in a rent-seeking state. While the developmental state intervenes to enhance the country's competitiveness in the global market, the rent-seeking state focuses on extracting payments from society. After two decades of doi moi, rent-seeking emerged in the mid-2000s as Vietnam's most powerful policy current, more than regime preservation and national modernization.

When Nguyen Tan Dung was elected as Prime Minister in 2006, rent-seekers achieved primacy in the Vietnamese leadership. Dung pursued an economic policy that relied on high investment and state-owned conglomerates. He appointed cronies regardless of their competence in business and management to lead these “dinosaurs”, turning them into money-extracting devices for the rent-seekers. In early 2008, months ahead of the global financial turmoil that started the same year, Vietnam fell into a prolonged period of economic slowdown.

In the last few decades, Asia and the Pacific has established itself as a formidable economic force that has proven remarkably resilient to difficulties, weathering both the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008. While countries elsewhere on the globe continue to struggle to shake off the worst effects of the 2008 GFC, Asia and the Pacific has continued to prosper and post gains in economic growth and poverty eradication.

Coming into 2018, the outlook for the region was largely optimistic. Early in the year, the global trade slowdown, which started around 2010, appeared to have begun bottoming out, with East and Southeast Asia in particular leading the recovery. Export growth in the second half of 2017 reached 7.9 per cent in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and 16.5 per cent in the five largest ASEAN economies: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. That Asia and the Pacific managed to achieve this in the midst of growing protectionism elsewhere speaks volumes about the region's commitment to regional and global integration.

Unfortunately, more recent data suggests that the recovery in global trade may have been short-lived. With growth expected to ease in some advanced economies, the growth in world trade is projected to decline slightly from 4.7 per cent in 2017 to 4.5 per cent in 2018. In developing countries in Asia and the Pacific, trade volume growth is also projected to ease from the estimated 7.6 per cent in 2017 to 5.5 per cent in 2018.

Moreover, although the economic outlook for the region in 2018 and 2019 remains somewhat favourable, downside risks are on the rise. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) still expects developing countries in the region to hit 6 per cent growth this year, but it has trimmed the forecast for 2019 by 0.1 percentage points to 5.8 per cent.

A number of critical changes are afoot. Many of the favourable conditions that have helped fuel the region's successes may not hold in the short-term, while emerging trends such as population ageing and the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) bring with them new long-term opportunities as well as challenges.

Ever since the Indo-Pacific re-emerged as a viable strategic concept in 2017 and Asia's four democratic major powers — the United States, Japan, Australia and India — reconvened their quadrilateral security dialogue (the Quad), Southeast Asian countries have been wary of ASEAN losing its centrality in the regional political and economic order. The conceptual linkage of the two oceans and consequent expansion of geopolitical space was bound to have this effect to some extent. Moreover, the combination of four democratic major powers in a region largely home to single-party governments and authoritarian regimes raised the spectre of goals beyond the containment of China, or at least the containment of China through the creation of democratic transitions on its periphery — this was an argument the original boosters of the Quad in Washington had made in 2007. Finally, the overlaying of the Quad on the Indo-Pacific concept gave rise to fears of a return to Cold War–style containment, this time of China, and major-power politics rearing its ugly head yet again in Southeast Asia.

Although these concerns are real and require a response from ASEAN, Southeast Asian countries can expect to find support from an unexpected quarter: India. When the Quad was originally proposed in 2007, diplomatic protest from China had caused India and Australia to roll back their commitments, and the initiative went into stasis after George W. Bush and Shinzo Abe subsequently left office. A decade later, as the Quad returns, Australia's and China's positions have changed but India's remains the same. Canberra is now an enthusiastic supporter — arguably because of China's growing attempts to influence Australian civil society and government — and Beijing is less concerned as its own power has grown by leaps and bounds in the intervening decade. New Delhi, however, is and always has been keen to create significant distance between the concept of the Indo-Pacific and the institutional arrangement that is the Quad.

It was telling, for example, that India's official statement following the Quad's landmark Manila meeting in November 2017 diverged significantly from the statements of the other three powers in choosing to omit any mention of freedom of navigation, respect for international law, and maritime security (though these are causes that India has supported in bilateral and trilateral statements).

Brunei Darussalam, one of the smallest yet richest countries in Southeast Asia with a total population of nearly 450,000, has made remarkable economic progress as a result of its reforms. Some indications of its achievements are presented in this chapter. The 2018 ASEAN+3 Regional Economic Outlook (AREO) projected that Brunei would have strong growth in gross domestic product (GDP), rising from 0.6 per cent in 2017 to 1.6 per cent and 3.4 per cent in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Yet, according to a forecast of the overall growth rate of real GDP among the ten Southeast Asian countries, Brunei experienced the slowest growth rate this decade. The country's average GDP annual growth rate — greatly affected by world prices and the local production of oil and gas — from 2004 to 2018 was 0.13 per cent.

Despite the challenges associated with the decline in energy reserves and falling world oil prices, the Brunei government and industrial players remain optimistic about the future of the country, in view of the rapid development of the global economy and the continual enhancement of the life energy requirement, which in turn increases the global demand for oil and gas. A decade after the 2008 global financial crisis, the casualties of Brunei's near economic downturn are slowly fading from memory. Oil exploration and drilling activities are actively in progress, with a continued focus on accessing more resources for the development of the overall economy, in line with the country's need for diversification strategies that can deliver sustained, job-intensive and inclusive growth.

Brunei's own experience of sustainable economic growth underscores the importance of economic diversification and broad-based economic development governed by prudent policy and regulation. Economic diversification has been a key theme of Brunei's long-term strategy since the launch of its first development plan, the National Development Plan 1953–1958. While there is reason to be optimistic about the country's future economic prosperity because the government has shown progress in its basic policy of diversifying the economy away from oil and gas, the challenge is how to wean the country off its debt drip without intensifying an economic slowdown.

The year 2018 marked twenty years since the resignation of Soeharto and the onset of democratic reform in Indonesia. In 1998, Indonesia's leaders faced an ailing economy rife with corruption, domestic instability and student protests, with predictions of “Balkanization” amidst threats of separatism. Today, it is worth reflecting on the state of the country as a relatively consolidated democratic system with a separate police force and vibrant press, particularly when compared to other Southeast Asian states. It is inevitable that today's achievements are weighed against Indonesia's previously dire circumstances, having emerged from the East Asian financial crisis and domestic political turmoil. At the same time, Indonesia's progress is also measured by the hopes and expectations of Indonesians (for those not too cynical) that their new leaders will transcend some of the most odious features of the Soeharto regime. Seen in that light, the country's democratic shine is tarnished by the seemingly never-ending high-profile corruption cases and entrenched money politics. The year saw the jailing of former speaker of the House of Representatives and former Golkar chair Setya Novanto for stealing US$170 million (2.3 trillion rupiah) of public monies.

The year was also a last push for the incumbent president to prove that his programme of national development had made significant gains. In 2018 the key task of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) was to keep the country on an even keel leading up to the 2019 presidential election. He faced a number of domestic challenges, from the Surabaya terrorist attacks, which saw children being used in suicide bombings for the first time, to the slew of major natural disasters in the second half of the year. The economy was rocked by volatile oil prices and the fallout from a trade war between the world's largest economies, the United States and China, which led to the precipitous fall of the nation's currency. What follows is an overview of the key trends and major developments that shaped the largest state in Southeast Asia in 2018. The first section discusses the significance of Ma'ruf Amin as Jokowi's running mate and what it reveals about the prevailing political environment.

If a week is a long time in politics, what of an entire year? Malaysians embarking on an extended holiday at the beginning of 2018 would have returned to a deeply disorienting socio-political landscape at year's end. They would have had to absorb the fact that the once-mighty Barisan Nasional political alliance now lay in tatters, with former prime minister Najib Razak facing thirty-eight criminal charges of fraud, corruption and money laundering related to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal. They would be reading newspapers filled with daily pronouncements from nonagenarian Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's now-returned premier, supported by a cast of political players mostly unused to wielding federal power. Their shopping and dining receipts would be marked by the conspicuous absence of the goods and services tax (GST). Their friends, families and colleagues might speak of new expectations, whether in terms of future livelihoods, educational opportunities, inter-ethnic relations, or the rule of law. This chapter will discuss how this situation came to be, as well as its deeper significance for Malaysians and their neighbours.

Politics: A Glass Half Full?

The road to Malaysia's political upset arguably began in September 2016, when Mahathir cemented his break with the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) by founding Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) on the 8th of the month, before literally joining hands with former political arch-rival Anwar Ibrahim the following day. Drawing in several disaffected Malay political heavyweights, including former deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin, former Kedah chief minister Mukhriz Mahathir and former Negri Sembilan chief minister Rais Yatim, Bersatu acquired further mainstream credibility in March 2017 when the Pakatan Harapan coalition — with Anwar Ibrahim's approval — formally accepted Bersatu into its fold. Reconciliation was reinforced in July 2017 when Pakatan's leadership agreed on having Mahathir as its prime ministerial candidate, with Anwar as Pakatan's de facto leader and Mahathir's eventual political successor.

Notwithstanding these remarkable events, many Malaysians entered 2018 with little clarity regarding which party they should support at the ballot box. Each option had its drawbacks and potential dangers.

The year 2018 marked forty years since the economic reforms in China were ushered in by Deng Xiaopeng. China and the overseas Chinese community commemorated the anniversary with conferences, forums, exhibits and other celebratory activities worldwide to share China's achievements and the phenomenal success of its economic reforms and developmental model.

China's rise to become the world's second-biggest economy has benefitted both the Philippines and the region. For the Philippines, China's capital (through loans or grants) and expertise in building infrastructure and boosting agricultural production would be key in stimulating Philippine economic growth and development. This has also been accompanied by new migration patterns and business overtures to the Philippines, especially under the Belt and Road Initiative. The past decade has seen a sharp rise in the number of new immigrants from China, particularly in the past two years since the election of President Rodrigo R. Duterte in 2016. They continue to pour into the Philippines, some seeking residency legally through investment and retirement visas or special working permits.

The presence of the new Chinese immigrants has caused some tensions and complications in the Philippines, especially among the local ethnic Chinese community. The Chinese-Filipinos, or Tsinoys, sometimes find themselves embroiled in the popular discontent against China and Chinese immigrants. This is further complicated by China's recent outreach efforts to the Chinese diaspora, which has been characterized by a relative lack of careful consideration about the distinction between Chinese nationals abroad and foreign nationals of ethnic Chinese descent.

The first section of this chapter will discuss the state-to-state relationship between China and the Philippines, especially the burgeoning cooperation in infrastructural developments in the Philippines. It will also describe why Chinese-backed projects have not been popularly received in the Philippines, although sometimes through no fault of China. The second section will cover the contemporary wave of Chinese immigrants into the Philippines as well as highlight the tensions and problems associated with the migrants. The third section will explore the recent policies of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Bureau, which risks alienating many citizens of Southeast Asia who are of Chinese descent, including those in the Philippines.