Tab Article
The regions that we know today as Southeast Asia and China have, for millennia, been linked together through a diverse range of political, economic and social interactions. From the earliest days the two regions have been tied by commercial interaction, human movement and political aspirations, and have been woven together by technological and cultural interflows. These interactions have also of course seen ebbs and flows as a result of successive political changes and economic pressures. It is these historical relationships that form the basis upon which contemporary China-Southeast Asian relations are today being built. Understanding the historical patterns, the commercial linkages, the changes in empires, the pressures to migrate and the other exigencies that conditioned these relations will help us all understand the changes now going on in interactions between China and Southeast Asia, which are some of the most dynamic in the world today.
