Japan v.s. China in Southeast Asia

The Asia Times has a great article on the “struggle” between China and Japan for influence in Southeast Asia.

Moves between Japan and China over the development of the Mekong River basin show signs of intensifying as Tokyo is trying to regain some ground lost in recent years to Beijing in the economic backwater of East Asia…

The Mekong region has huge potential for economic growth. In the late 1980s, then Thai prime minister Chatichai Choonhavan advocated turning Indochina “from a battlefield into a market”. Now that Cold War conflicts are a thing of the past and the CLMV countries are accelerating free-market reforms launched in the late 1980s, Chatichai”s slogan is no longer a mere pipe dream, it is a reality, although it will still take some years for private-sector investment in the Mekong region to become a flood, not just a trickle…

In the early 1990s, after years of civil war ended in Cambodia, Japan took the leadership role in efforts to develop the Mekong region, backed by its huge aid money, and secured a strong influence in the region. With the turn of the millennium, however, China began to turn the tables on Japan, while Japan rested on its laurels.

The article is a nice historical roundup of the recent history, and good to read because it makes no apologies about seeing the two countries as geopolitical rivals.