The China-U.S. trade talks reveal a third possibility for Southeast Asian development.

Source: Cultural Crossroads

Introduction

On May 10, 2025, the China-US high-level economic and trade talks were officially launched in Geneva, Switzerland, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessant held a dialogue with China as the U.S. leader. The talks between China and the United States have attracted global attention, especially in Southeast Asia. In the context of the intensification of the Sino-US game, Southeast Asia, as a key region for industrial transfer and economic and trade cooperation, has become more uncertain. Vietnam has actively participated in the tariff negotiations with the United States, and three days ago (May 7), as one of the first negotiating countries, announced that it had made a "good start" and achieved "positive preliminary results". The recent outbreak of the India-Pakistan conflict may further promote Southeast Asia's "hedging" role in the industrial chain and further divide regional economic integration.

This article reviews the development path of Southeast Asia after the war. Under different international political scenarios, Southeast Asia has participated in the international economic and trade cycle through the flying geese model and value-added trade. With the return of geopolitical dynamics, Southeast Asia's trade model is entering a third form of trade, as Vietnam and Malaysia simultaneously undertake industrial transfers from China and the United States, but face the risk of strategic alignment. The upgrade of US-Vietnam relations is crucially tied to the United States' commitment to helping Vietnam develop its semiconductor and rare earth industries, which are core areas of US-China competition. Furthermore, Malaysia, leveraging its mature electronics manufacturing and logistics advantages, is becoming one of the biggest beneficiaries in the US-China semiconductor competition.

The author points out that in the face of changes in the trade patterns and structures of Southeast Asia, China, with its enormous market size, has considerable room for adjustment. As long as it adheres to an open and inclusive free trade policy, it can greatly delay or even avoid the separation and "decoupling" of economic and trade relations in the East Asian region. However, it should not be overlooked that the United States is vigorously supporting the better-performing countries among Southeast Asian economies, attempting to replace China's position in the East Asian production chain from both high and low ends.

This article was originally published in the 4th issue of "Cultural Perspective" in 2024, titled "The Development Model of Southeast Asia in the Changing Landscape of Great Power Games**",** representing only the author's views for readers' reference.

The Development Model of Southeast Asia in the Changing Dynamics of Great Power Competition

In the context of the intensification of the game between China and the United States, the importance of Southeast Asia has become more prominent. Compared to the beginning of the 21st century, Southeast Asia (ASEAN) is now a dazzling presence on the world stage. ASEAN as a whole is the world's fifth-largest economy in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, after China, the United States, the European Union, and India, and its share of the world economy has grown from 5.0% in 2001 to 6.4% in 2023. Since the beginning of the 21st century, Southeast Asia's economic growth has also attracted attention, with the average annual growth rate of the world economy being about 3.0 percent, the average annual growth rate of Southeast Asian countries being 5.0 percent, and the countries of the Indochina Peninsula being close to 7.0 percent. In the area of trade, ASEAN countries are also an important force, with their share of world goods exports increasing from 6.2% in 2001 to 7.6% in 2023, almost equal to the total value of exports from Africa and Latin America as a whole. Outside of the economy, the major powers are vying to be friendly with ASEAN, not only recognizing ASEAN's "centrality" but also taking into account the participation of Southeast Asian countries in many regional economic and trade agreements. What is particularly striking is that ASEAN countries participate in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) promoted by China, and many member countries participate in the exclusive Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) led by the United States.

The competition between China and the United States in geopolitical and geoeconomic terms is increasingly intensifying, and the impact of great power competition on economic and trade issues is expanding. So, has the development space for Southeast Asia, situated between these great powers, shrunk or expanded? For China, in the face of pressure and containment from the United States, how can it further strengthen the China-Southeast Asia relationship, and can Southeast Asia serve as a strategic focus? These questions are not only of practical significance but also have strong theoretical implications. Understanding the development of Southeast Asia against the backdrop of intensified geopolitical competition requires attention not only to the emerging phenomena in the security domain, such as betting on both sides and choosing sides, but also to recognizing how changes in the economic division of labor impact political relations.

The Gaggle Model and the Development of Southeast Asia

In terms of purchasing power parity per capita GDP, the overall development level of Asia has been lower than that of Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa for a long time. In the 1950s, Argentina's per capita GDP was about 50% of that of the United States, while Southeast Europe and the Caribbean had per capita GDP close to 30% of that of the United States; in 1950, Asia's per capita GDP was less than 8% of that of the United States, and East Asian economies had a per capita GDP of about 7% of that of the United States, with China, India, and Japan accounting for 4.7%, 6.5%, and 20.1% of that of the United States, respectively.

The rise of East Asia has changed that. The earliest and faster developments were made by Japan, the "Four Little Tigers" in Asia, and a number of countries in Southeast Asia. The development of East Asian countries has been sequential, but basically they are on the track of gradual development, and this is a characteristic shared by the vast majority of East Asian countries. By the early 80s of the 20th century, the per capita GDP of Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, China reached 72.2%, 22.1% and 56.5% of the United States, respectively, and the per capita GDP of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand reached 48.8%, 19.7% and 13.7% of the United States, respectively. By the year China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO WTO) Singapore had 80 percent of the United States, South Korea's share rose to 52.6 percent, Thailand 22.8 percent, China jumped to 13.2 percent, and India was still less than 7 percent. This gradual process of change is not only in line with people's understanding of different regions, but also attracts the attention of the academic community, and among the various early theories on the development dynamics of East Asia, the most influential is the wild goose model proposed by Japanese scholars.

The main idea of the theory of the wild goose pattern was formed by Kiyoshi Kojima and his teacher Akamatsu in the 40s of the 20th century, and the area based on the Japanese colonial empire during World War II, including Taiwan, Northeast China, and the Korean Peninsula. During World War II, Japan attempted to establish the so-called "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" and promote the formation of a new regional order different from that of Britain and the United States, and Japanese economists were also involved. After the end of World War II, such voices in Japanese economics disappeared for a time. With the progress of European integration, regional cooperation among Asian countries is back on the agenda. These theoretical accumulations formed by Japanese scholars before the war became the theoretical basis for Japan's thinking and deployment of regional cooperation in Asia in the 60s of the 20 th century.

There are three things at the heart of the geese pattern. First, the development sequence between industries from low to high, from labor-intensive textile industry to capital-intensive and technology-intensive industries; Second, countries with a high level of development will transfer their outdated industries to countries with a low level of development; Third, development is gradual and progressive, and after further development, a country in the second level of development will transfer its industries from the first-level country to the third-level country. Therefore, the flying geese model constructs a dynamic division of labor model of "industry × country" within a certain region. Correspondingly, the international trade pattern in East Asia at this stage was dominated by a typical North-South trade pattern, with less developed countries exporting natural resource products and labor-intensive manufacturing products, while Japan exported various capital-intensive and human capital-intensive manufacturing products.

By the mid-1990s, two prominent phenomena called into question the validity of the flying geese model. First, with the widespread development of the electronics industry in East Asian countries, the sequential industrial replacement advocated by the flying geese model became ineffective. Second, Japan lost in its trade competition with the United States and could no longer maintain a relatively closed regional production network. Like developed countries, the East Asian region also has extensive intra-industry trade, which differs from the flying geese model based on inter-industry trade.

After China's accession to the WTO, intra-industry trade in East Asia has become more widespread and extensive, and Japanese scholars are still at the forefront of scholarship to summarize these phenomena. Kiyoshi Kojima continues to expand on the flying geese model, emphasizing that the theory still has explanatory power in understanding industrial catch-up. In his book The Rise of Asia, Teruchi Ozawa systematically discusses the phenomenon of group development in Asian countries, and calls it "the U.S.-led growth cluster." The basic unit of Ozawa's analysis and research is no longer the nation-state of the past, but a region. For economics, this is a big shift; But it is not uncommon for the discipline of international relations to shift from the national to the regional. His new contribution consisted mainly in the complete recognition of the United States (rather than Japan, as the theory of the flying geese model) as the leading goose, and the reintroduction of power factors into the study of industrial transfer in East Asia. In the late 20th century, with the rapid development of information technology, the division of labor in the industry has made rapid progress. When it comes to the development of information technology, we cannot bypass the political and economic motives behind the United States and its information technology.

Value-Added Trade and Southeast Asian Development Under the Dominance of U.S. Power

Under the power advantage of the United States, the study of intra-industry trade in the information age has led to new theoretical insights. First, many countries embrace openness by joining the international market through tax reductions, signing bilateral investment agreements, and free trade agreements. Second, the power status of the United States is prominent; although there are some voices opposing globalization within the United States, it still generally advocates for globalization.

Under the influence of this trend of thought, the academic community has concentrated on studying the dynamics and reasons for the rapid growth of international trade since the 90s of the 20th century, and has depicted the progress of "vertical specialized trade". In the 21st century, scholars have found through rigorous empirical analysis that 30% of the trade growth from the 70s to the early 90s of the 20th century was actually intra-industry trade, which means that more and more countries are beginning to focus on a specific stage of commodity production, rather than producing the entire commodity. Since the 90s of the 20th century, intra-industry trade has further developed, and the value-added trade, which is mainly characterized by vertical specialization, has increased significantly, and a global value chain trade system has gradually been formed. According to the authoritative statement of the World Bank, before the outbreak of the international financial crisis in 2008, global value chain trade accounted for more than 50% of global trade, and although it has stagnated since then, it has not declined.

This process has also greatly influenced the development paths and trade patterns of Southeast Asia. Since the early 1990s, East Asian developing countries that have joined the global value chain have also started to export manufactured products, particularly machinery. The trade patterns among countries in the region have become increasingly similar, and intra-industry trade (IIT) has become more important. Since then, the international trade pattern in the East Asian region has rapidly shifted from inter-industry trade under the flying geese model to intra-industry trade.

The long-standing division of labor in international trade is that developed countries export manufactured goods and developing countries export raw materials, and when the poorer countries among the developing countries also begin to export manufactured goods, new trade theories are needed to explain it. After the end of the Cold War, scholars in the United States, Europe, and Japan invariably turned to the study of vertical specialization, which greatly enriched our understanding of the development of Southeast Asia, and thus gave birth to the second-generation development model based on intra-industry trade and value-added trade. Why has East Asia steadily established international production/distribution networks, while other developing regions, such as Latin America (with the exception of Mexico), have had little success? Why are East Asia's production/distribution networks more complex than the U.S.-Mexico relationship or the Western Europe-CEE corridor? Behind this is actually a major readjustment of the development strategies of East Asian countries.

The major event in the world economy in the 80s of the last century was the trade friction between the United States and Japan. In the face of competitive pressure from the United States, Japan has turned to Southeast Asia as one of its main supports, using the so-called "second spin-off" to outsource labor-intensive production stages to neighboring low-wage Southeast Asian countries, and this offshoring is also considered a source of Japan's comparative advantage in the European and American markets. Under the influence of Japanese multinationals, Southeast Asian countries are also developing rapidly. What is particularly striking is that Southeast Asia, like Japan in the past, has been successful in exporting electrical and general machinery, and its share of the global market exceeds that of Southeast Asia's total economy. On the eve of the 2008 international financial crisis, there had been a clear shift in global production from mature industrial economies to developing countries, particularly in East Asia. Machinery and transport equipment, especially information and communication technology (ICT) products and electrical products, have played a key role in the transformation of the export structure of East Asian countries, and China's rising position is increasingly significant. Asia's share of world trade in machinery and transport equipment rose from 14.5 per cent in 1995 to 42.4 per cent in 2007, with exports accounting for more than four-fifths of the increase. By 2007, more than 58 per cent of total global ICT exports came from Asia, with China alone accounting for 23 per cent. In electronics, China's world market share rose to 20.6% from 3.1% in the mid-90s. In addition, with the exception of Singapore, the world market share of ASEAN countries is growing faster than the regional average.

The Third Phase of China's Rise and Southeast Asia's Development

After entering the new century, the main form of Southeast Asia's participation in international trade remains value chain trade, which expands market share and deepens and broadens participation in the global value chain by enhancing specialization in a certain production link. However, the rise of the Chinese economy has not only changed the trade network relationships in Southeast Asia but has also significantly enhanced the influence of geopolitics on the evolution of value chains in the region. As early as before 2010, when its economic total surpassed Japan, China had already become the center of the East Asian production network. This means that a close economic and trade relationship has formed between China and Southeast Asia, and the development of the Southeast Asian region will inevitably be greatly influenced by China's foreign economic and trade relations, especially the impact of the China-U.S. trade friction in 2018.

Today, the development of trade among ASEAN countries can be briefly summarized into three different models. The first is Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, which have a high level of development, and their exports' share of GDP is several times higher than the world average, but all of them have passed their peaks. Among them, Singapore's peak exceeded 200%, which occurred during the 2008 financial crisis; Malaysia peaked at 120% in 1997 during the East Asian financial crisis; Thailand's peak was close to 70% and was a gentle peak that lasted for a long time, spanning the East Asian financial crisis and the international financial crisis. The second is Indochina countries, such as Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, where exports as a share of GDP are still rising. In particular, Vietnam's share of exports was short-term downward after the impact of the 2008 international financial crisis, but exceeded the pre-crisis level in 2014 and rose to 90% in 2022. The third is the Philippines and Indonesia, which are in between, and their share of exports has passed its peak, but is below the world average. The Philippines is a typical country where industrialization is immature or even de-industrialized prematurely. Indonesia is the largest economy in Southeast Asia, accounting for about 40% of ASEAN's total economy, but it is still a resource-exporting economy.

Among the Southeast Asian economies, Vietnam is the most typical one to improve the level of development through participation in value chain trade. Since Vietnam's accession to the WTO in January 2007, it has been rapidly integrated into the regional production network. Among Southeast Asian countries, foreign value added in Vietnam's exports rose the fastest. As Figure 1 shows, after the 2008 global financial crisis, with the exception of Viet Nam (and, to a lesser extent, Myanmar), the foreign value added component of exports from all other Southeast Asian economies declined. In 2007, the proportion of foreign value added in Vietnam's exports exceeded 40% for the first time, and in 2016, it exceeded 45%, ranking first in Southeast Asia. In second place, Singapore's share fell from 47% in 2014 to 41% in 2016. Compared with Vietnam and Singapore, the share of other economies in Southeast Asia has declined since 2018. In 2022, Vietnam's share exceeded 48%, an unprecedented level for Southeast Asian countries, mainly because Vietnam benefited the most from the trade friction between China and the United States. In China-ASEAN trade, the proportion of China-Vietnam trade volume has increased from 23.5% in 2017 to 25.2% in 2023, and the trade volume between China and Vietnam even exceeds the trade volume between China and Germany. At the same time, Vietnam's position among the U.S. trading partners has risen from 17th five years ago to 7th now. According to U.S. statistics, Vietnam is the third largest source of U.S. trade deficits in goods in 2023, reaching $104 billion. In 2022, U.S. direct investment in Vietnam reached $3.5 billion, up 27% year-on-year.

The two most typical industries of the value-added trade paradigm are electrical machinery and general machinery trade, and Vietnam has performed very well in these two industries. Among the ASEAN countries, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia have long been the top three economies in general machinery trade. After the 2008 international financial crisis, the share of Thailand and Malaysia in ASEAN began to decline. Singapore's share has declined before this, turning to the so-called knowledge economy, focusing on branding, marketing and other links. The share has continued to rise in Vietnam. In 2020, Vietnam's share of ASEAN's general machinery trade began to surpass Malaysia's, ranking third in ASEAN. In the field of electrical machinery, Vietnam's share surpassed Malaysia for the first time in 2017, ranking second in Southeast Asia, after Singapore. Vietnam's rapid rise in these two areas also reflects the changing status of East Asia as a trading nation for machinery products. Vietnam's trading partner for electrical machinery is mainly China, but the trading partner for general machinery is mainly Japan. Traditionally, Japan has been the center of the production chain in the region, and regional economic and trade relations have been greatly influenced by Japan's foreign economic relations. Since the beginning of the new century, after the center of the regional production chain has gradually shifted to China, the impact of changes in China's foreign economic relations on the industrial layout of Southeast Asia has also increased.

After the China-U.S. trade friction occurred in 2018, geopolitical competition had a significant impact on regional production chains. Geopolitical competition itself does not have a direct connection to the value chain, but the influence of geopolitics is extensive. More than twenty years ago, globalization was at its peak, and almost all countries embraced globalization, committed to engaging in trade on a larger scale to improve their overall welfare, while paying little attention to the distribution issues of trade gains between countries. Once geopolitical competition is involved, the distribution of trade gains between countries becomes very important, and it even changed the United States' attitude towards participating in international trade.

So far, the Biden administration in the United States is still implementing the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on China, which have affected the way ASEAN countries participate in regional production chains. As shown in Figure 2, in terms of ASEAN's participation in international trade, compared with the early 21st century and the two stages after the 2008 international financial crisis, ASEAN's trading partners have undergone the following important changes since 2018. First, dependence on exports outside ASEAN has risen, from less than 75% in the first two phases to 77.1% in 2022. The change is astonishing. It is generally believed that the increase in the proportion of intra-regional trade is a sign of increased regional autonomy. Clearly, ASEAN community building has failed to provide itself with a larger internal market. Second, the swap of positions between China and Japan is the biggest change in ASEAN's external trading partners in the past two decades. From the beginning of the 21st century to 2022, ASEAN's export dependence on Japan fell from 11.8% to 6.8%, while its export dependence on China increased from 6.5% to 14.8%. It should be noted that compared with the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, ASEAN's overall export dependence on China, Japan, and South Korea remains unchanged at about 25%. Third, over the past two decades, ASEAN's export dependence on the United States has shown a U-shaped trajectory of first declining and then rising. It should be noted that the biggest change in the ASEAN export market in the past decade is that the share of the US market in ASEAN's exports has increased from 8.5% to 14.8%, which is even 0.01 percentage points more than China's! Among them, between 2018~2020, the proportion of the U.S. market in ASEAN's exports increased from 11.2% to 15.7%, which shows the huge impact of Sino-US trade frictions. At present, China and the United States are ASEAN's two largest trading partners, and the competition between the two is becoming more and more obvious.

Although relations between China and the United States have eased since the San Francisco Vision was reached in November 2023, all parties believe that China-US relations are a long-term game. The impact of strategic competition between major powers on the supply chain will be long-term, so it has attracted the attention of all parties. However, from the current empirical analysis, there seems to be no consensus on the scope and extent of such impacts. Judging from the total trade volume between China and the United States in 2022, there is no "decoupling" between China and the United States. However, from a structural point of view, the products less affected by the tariffs are mainly toys, video game consoles, smartphones, laptops and computer monitors. The "decoupling" of the supply chain in the Sino-US confrontation has brought serious uncertainty to the cross-border industrial layout of enterprises. Although the production network of most machinery products in East Asia is still actively developing, and the trade statistics at the departmental level do not show obvious signs of large-scale supply chain "decoupling", but at the level of international trade sub-data, the industrial chain has been significantly adjusted, and this change is mainly due to the "decoupling" policy, especially the Entity List control measures in the United States. Although it is unclear to what extent the prospect of "decoupling" will evolve, under US pressure, US allies in East Asia, such as Japan and South Korea, will also cooperate with US control measures and reduce investment in the region.

In the context of the resurgence of geopolitical factors, the trade patterns in Southeast Asia are bound to undergo significant changes, but how exactly they will evolve is still not fully clear. The economic and trade development in the Southeast Asian region is entering a new phase, requiring the integration of first-generation and second-generation trade models to establish a third-generation explanatory model.

Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam have benefited from the intensifying game between China and the United States, but Vietnam is also increasingly worried about being forced to take sides. After U.S. President Joe Biden's visit to Vietnam in September 2023, U.S.-Vietnam relations were upgraded to a comprehensive strategic partnership. This position is the highest level of Vietnam's diplomacy, which has previously only had bilateral relations of this nature with China, India, Russia and South Korea. According to a report released by the Australian Parliament, as the U.S.-Vietnam relationship has escalated, other countries in the region are also accelerating the upgrading of bilateral relations with Vietnam, especially Japan, whose strategic partnership with Vietnam is in fact a comprehensive strategic partnership that needs to be justified. One of the most striking aspects of the escalation of U.S.-Vietnam relations is the U.S. pledge to help Vietnam develop its semiconductor and rare earth industries, which are areas of intense competition between China and the United States. At the same time, the U.S. is also stepping up efforts to relocate semiconductor manufacturing from Asia back to the U.S. mainland.

Another interesting example is Malaysia. Malaysia is the world's sixth-largest exporter of semiconductors, accounting for 13% of the global semiconductor packaging, assembly, and testing market. As early as 1972, the American company Intel invested in the development of the semiconductor industry in Penang, Malaysia. With its mature electronics manufacturing and logistics advantages, Malaysia is becoming one of the biggest beneficiaries of the semiconductor competition between China and the United States. Penang received US$12.8 billion in foreign direct investment in 2023, which is equivalent to the total amount of foreign investment absorbed by the state in 2013~2020, and most of the foreign investment comes from China. According to estimates by the local investment board, there are currently 55 companies from Chinese mainland in Penang engaged in manufacturing, most of which are related to the semiconductor industry. Before the U.S. imposed a semiconductor blockade on China, there were only 16 Chinese companies in Penang.

Realism in the theory of international political economy often predicts that under political pressure, the flow of the economy will ultimately align with political positions. However, to date, most Southeast Asian countries have not significantly leaned towards either China or the United States. On one hand, most Southeast Asian countries emphasize a neutral stance and do not take sides; on the other hand, U.S. allies in Northeast Asia are increasingly aligning with the United States. Why are Southeast Asian countries able to maintain a relatively stable situation between China and the U.S.? Is it because the technological level of the industries developing in Southeast Asia is lower than that of Northeast Asian countries, which does not touch upon the national security concerns of the United States? Or is it because Southeast Asia is more reliant on the Chinese market in production networks, and maintaining ASEAN's central position requires closer ties with China? If the industries in Southeast Asia further upgrade, will it trigger a more turbulent geopolitical game? Further examination of these questions will help us understand the development model of Southeast Asia.

Conclusion

When explaining the development of Southeast Asia, academia has proposed two major intergenerational trade models: the flying geese model based on inter-industry trade and the value-added trade model based on intra-industry trade. Currently, under the influence of major power strategic competition, the Southeast Asian region is entering a third form of trade. We need a new political economy theory to understand this trade model.

Both the flying geese trade model and the value-added trade model depend on a specific international political landscape. The experience of Japanese scholars in proposing the flying geese model actually comes from Japan's colonization of East Asia during World War II, which was dormant for a long time after the end of World War II. It was not until the mid-60s of the 20th century, when regional cooperation in Asia began to take off, that there was an industrial transfer between the United States and the Asian countries in the so-called "liberal international order" that it dominated. Japanese scholars did not pay enough attention to the US factor for a long time, and it was not until the early 90s of the 20 th century that the US-Japan trade friction fell behind for a while, and the role of the United States was initially recognized. Since then, U.S.-led globalization has taken great strides, and scholars have developed a paradigm of value-added trade in explaining the rapid growth of trade. China's replacement of Japan as the center of regional production networks has had a much more important impact on the development of Southeast Asia than Japan's, and has led to a larger crackdown and containment from the United States.

In 2018, the Sino-US trade friction is a major event affecting the industrial division of labor in Southeast Asia, and the value chain trade is facing great challenges. With the change of U.S. policy toward China, the adjustment of China's development strategy and foreign economic relations as the center of the regional production network, and the follow-up of relevant policies by the U.S. Asia-Pacific allies, Southeast Asia's development has entered the third stage. Compared with the previous two stages, the internal development space of Southeast Asia has shrunk, but individual countries still maintain a good development momentum, and Vietnam is a typical representative of seeking development under the game of great powers. Although it is still not possible to conclude that China and the United States will decouple, the structure of intraregional trade is changing significantly. Between 2018~2020, the proportion of the U.S. market in ASEAN's exports increased sharply from 11.2% to 15.7%, and the proportion of the Chinese market in ASEAN's exports increased from 13.8% to 15.8%. In terms of growth, the United States is half ahead of China. Moreover, the rise in the U.S. share began long after the Obama administration's first "pivot to Southeast Asia" and its "pivot to Asia" in 2011. It can be seen that the new trade model has begun to be conceived in the heyday of the old model. The impact of geopolitics and policy on trade flows is far-reaching, and it remains to be seen who will remain ASEAN's largest partners in the long term.

It should be noted that during 2018~2020, the proportion of the ASEAN market in ASEAN's exports decreased from 24.0% to 21.3%, and after the end of the epidemic, although the proportion of the ASEAN regional market has recovered, it has not yet reached the level of 2018, which proves that the construction of the ASEAN internal market has been greatly impacted by geopolitics. The good news for China is that China's continued open-door policy has stabilized China-ASEAN economic and trade relations, especially as imports from ASEAN are still growing. To a certain extent, this shows that China, with its super-large market, has a lot of room for adjustment, and as long as it adheres to an open and inclusive free trade policy, it can still greatly delay or even avoid the separation and "decoupling" of economic and trade relations in East Asia. However, it cannot be ignored that the United States is vigorously supporting the countries with better conditions in the Southeast Asian economy, trying to replace China's position in the East Asian production chain from both high and low directions.