Economic gravity pulls nations closer than shared ideas
Business
Nations in Southeast Asia are increasingly prioritizing trade over ideology, as China's massive infrastructure investments outpace Western aid by five to one.
While political alliances often dominate headlines, the sheer mass of trade is reshaping the map of global influence. In Southeast Asia, a significant shift occurred when elite preference for China overtook that for the United States for the first time. This transition is powered by economic gravity: China’s Belt and Road Initiative has poured roughly 1 trillion dollars into regional infrastructure since 2013, dwarfing the 200 billion dollars provided by Washington.