Yoon Ah Oh

China's ambitious global infrastructure investment plan, embodied in the Belt and Road Initiative and backed by massive financial resources, is an attempt to secure cooperation from developing countries in Asia and beyond to support its rise as a global power. Such cooperation, however, is not guaranteed. Despite the power asymmetry between China and partner countries, as well as the latter's significant infrastructure investment needs, host countries still need to be convinced of the specific b

The Philippine labour migration regime has been praised as one of the best examples of government-led migration management in the developing world, with some of the most extensive policies and bureaucratic organisations to manage and protect its citizens working abroad. However, not much knowledge has been accumulated that explains its origins or why it emerged in the Philippines and not in other large-scale migrant-sending countries. Contrary to current explanations that emphasise the economic

This study examines state-private firm coordination in China’s corporate globalization with a focus on cross-border mergers and acquisitions in Southeast Asia. The profile of China’s private firms in the country’s overseas economic expansion has risen dramatically over the past few years, but the controversy continues as to what extent they coordinate their overseas activities with the state. This is because Chinese private firms, not unlike state-owned enterprises, have political economy reason

Although remittance income is likely to increase the level of financial resources in the household, such a contribution should be assessed against the disruptive effect of migration on other aspects of family life. Using individual-level data from the Philippines, this article explores the impact of international migration on the life satisfaction of the families of migrants in the home country. The analysis compares happiness outcomes across non-migrant households, the households reliant on rem

This research note empirically examines China’s development assistance to Asia, a region critical to China’s geostrategic ambition, from 2000 to 2014. It uses AidData’s Global Chinese Official Finance Dataset, one of the most reliable publicly available data sources on Chinese aid, which systematically collects and classifies different types of China’s official development finance. It is found that, despite a recent surge, China’s development assistance to Asia remains highly limited compared to

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This study offers an analysis of cross-country difference in Southeast Asian public opinion on China in the mid-2010s, using data from the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS). I pursue two empirical questions: (1) how China fared in perceived influence and positivity compared to the U.S. at the national level and ( The findings indicate that public perceptions by country are not radically different from commonly known government-level orientations toward China. Yet there are interesting patterns of clu

Myanmar’s external economic relations during the 2010s can be broadly characterized as processes of re-integration with the outside world, thus paying the way for diversification away from dependence on its preeminent neighbor, China. A close examination, however, reveals a complex set of dynamics in Myanmar–China economic relations, particularly in the trade sector. A sectoral value chain analysis shows that Myanmar’s trade dependence on China rose rather rapidly during the early part of the de

Over the past decade, the United States, China, and Japan contested for influence in Myanmar, as the country began to emerge from decades of isolation and military rule. Despite the rich descriptions of rivalries between the United States and China, as well as Japan and China, the nature of geoeconomic power competition in Myanmar remains underarticulated. Popular accounts often use a magnitude-based concept of power to track how much power countries have gained or lost over Myanmar. However, th