Trio Of Books Shows A Southeast Asia Caught Between World Powers

Over the course of just a few weeks in the fall, Southeast Asia became the stage for a flurry of diplomatic visits.

First Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga visited Indonesia and Vietnam during his inaugural overseas trip. Then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made stops in the same two countries on his last trip before the U.S. elections. A short while later, representatives of all Southeast Asian nations as well as Japan and China, and a few others, inked the world's largest trade deal, the RCEP, just as the U.S. Navy pitched a whole new fleet to enhance its presence in the region.

This series of events highlights Southeast Asia's increasing importance on the global stage, as China's growing influence there is coupled with the U.S.'s desire to somehow counter that influence.

This is the focus of three new books that aim to shed light on the hopes and fears that China's extraordinary rise, and concurrent assertiveness, engenders in what it considers its own backyard.