Chinese president Xi Jinping has embarked on a tour of Southeast Asia to expand ties.
The trade war between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is in full swing, with the Trump administration imposing a 145 percent tariff on Chinese goods (with a notable exemption for consumer electronics), and Beijing responding with tit-for-tat relation.
This may not be what Beijing asked for, but the PRC is not one to pass up an opportunity. China is now seeking alternate economic partnerships to fill the void left by the American tariffs, including in a region that’s conveniently much closer geographically speaking: Southeast Asia.
China Looks to Southeast Asia
As Andrew Salmon of The Washington Times wrote in an April 18, 2025 article titled “Amid U.S. tariff shock, Xi paints China as a reliable partner, woos Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia”:
“China’s huge economy and its Belt and Road Initiative, which develops massive infrastructure projects worldwide, largely in the developing world, offer Beijing powerful diplomatic-economic heft in both trade and investment … When tariffs were announced on April 2, Vietnam was hit with 46% duties, Malaysia with 24% and Cambodia with 49%. All have since been temporarily slashed to 10%, providing negotiating space in the weeks ahead.”
Accordingly, Chinese president Xi Jinping embarked on a tour of those three nations to lobby their heads of state for expanded ties. He hit it off particularly well with Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who heaped praise upon Beijing while implicitly taking a verbal jab at Washington:
“The rules-based order has been turned on its head — dialogue has yielded to demands, tariffs are imposed without restraint, and the language of cooperation is drowned. In these trying times, the world yearns for steadiness, reliability and purpose. We see this in China’s conduct.”
Cashing in in Cambodia
In terms of tangible results, Cambodia has provided the biggest windfall for China thus far. During Xi’s meeting with King Norodom Sihamoni and Prime Minister Hun Manet, the two sides pledged “all-weather ties” and exchanged more than thirty bilateral cooperation documents covering supply chains, artificial intelligence, development assistance, customs inspection, and health services.
More disturbingly from an international security standpoint, China has secured a significant “bases and places” win in Cambodia via the April 5 opening of the Ream Naval Base. Though officials claim the facility is open to all countries, it is strongly suspected that China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has secured privileged access; the base hosts a joint logistics facility, and joint China-Cambodia naval drills kicked off immediately after the grand opening ceremonies.
The PLAN’s privileges at Ream are especially concerning for two reasons:
1. The base provides an entry point to the Mekong River, which runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand (which is America’s only treaty partner in mainland Southeast Asia), Cambodia, and Vietnam
2. The base also potentially offers China a forward-deployed presence with power-projection potential toward the highly strategic Malacca Strait, which links the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal.
Some Additional Obstacles for Beijing
However, not all is smooth sailing for China’s efforts to find Southeast Asian markets and political alliances to offset the loss of the U.S. market.
This is especially true of Vietnam, which, in spite of its own previous war with the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, has at least loosely allied itself with the United States militarily as a bulwark against China due to Hanoi’s own long-standing enmity with Beijing. For example, the two nations fought each other in the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, and the last time China’s armed forces fired shots in anger was during a sea-land battle with Vietnamese forces in 1988. In the present day, the two nations are disputing territorial rights in the South China Sea.
There are also some logistical hurdles, as noted by Milton Ezrati of The Epoch Times in an April 24, 2025, article titled “Trump Finds Inadvertent Allies in His Trade War With China”:
“Making matters still more difficult for Chinese sellers is the relative lack of contract enforcement in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, compared to the United States. With few ways to pressure their new buyers, Chinese sellers have suffered great payment delays and sometimes outright theft … It almost seems as though the third world has allied itself with Trump against Beijing. Behavior in Southeast Asia and the Middle East seems geared, if unintentionally, to get Chinese businesspeople to pressure Beijing to make some accommodation with the White House and allow a return to the American market.”
About the Author: Christian D. Orr
Christian D. Orr was previously a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ) and 19FortyFive. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). If you’d like to pick his brain further, you can ofttimes find him at the Old Virginia Tobacco Company (OVTC) lounge in Manassas, Virginia, partaking of fine stogies and good quality human camaraderie.
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