China’s Geopolitical Strategies towards Southeast Asia: Understanding the Relevance of the Rimland Theory
Rabeya Bosri Chandni
Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Jagannath University, Dhaka-1100, Bangladesh.
Abstract
China’s relation with the Southeast Asian nations has been going through many ups and downs. The cold war geopolitics spread adversity and conflicts among the Southeast Asian states and the major powers. China’s secret support and assistance toward the communist parties of the ASEAN nations and the USA’s secret campaigns from their borders against the Chinese communists had multiplied that hostility. The Sino-USSR split, longevity of Vietnam war and China with nuclear weapons might help normalize the Sino-US relation. China like other major powers, the USA and the USSR, had utilized the Southeast Asia’s land to contain others ideological and military aggression. Its gradual but the continuation of measured steps in the Southeast Asia assisted it to normalize the hostile relationship. In this regard, its various diplomatic policies like “open-door policy”, “good neighbor policy”, etc. and economic strategies like “ASEAN–China Free-Trade Area”, and “the Belt and Road Initiative” etc. play a significant role. Their relation is now not limited to the good neighbors only; it has also been lifted to “development-partner” status. Aiming at the geopolitical interest, China has adopted both the bilateral and multilateral approach and a series of strategic policies and financial programs to penetrate the Southeast Asian states into the Sino goals. This qualitative paper, based on the secondary data sources, has endeavored to provide a comprehensive analysis of the Chinese geopolitical interests and strategies to the Southeast Asian states as per changes in its power and capabilities. It argues that the significance of the Rimland theory has not declined with the end of cold war rather it still dominates the foreign relations of Southeast Asia with both China and other major powers.
Keywords: Geopolitics, Cold War, Hostility, Economic Cooperation, Rimland.
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