About the Book

Southeast Asia is a region of critical global importance, and it is an increasing theatre of great power competition. As the eminent scholar David Shambaugh explains in Where Great Powers Meet, the United States and China are engaged in a broad-gauged and global competition for power, which is intensifying across Southeast Asia. The United States and China constantly vie for position and influence across this enormously significant region – and the outcome of this contest will do much to determine the future of the entire Indo-Pacific regional order. Specifically, Dr Shambaugh explores whether the region is becoming a new Chinese sphere of influence – or whether the ASEAN states will be able to successfully “hedge” and maintain a multinational balance of power. Just as importantly, to the extent that there is a global “power transition” occurring from the US to China, the fate of Southeast Asia will be a good indicator of how it may play out elsewhere.

The book is available for purchase from Oxford University Press, Amazon, and Kinokuniya (SG).

About the Author

David Shambaugh is an internationally recognised authority and award-winning author on contemporary China and the international relations of Asia. He currently is the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science & International Affairs, and the founding Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He was also formerly a Non-resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution and Director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has also worked in the U.S. Department of State and National Security Council, served on the Board of Directors of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Before joining the GWU faculty Professor Shambaugh was Reader in Chinese Politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), where he also served as Editor of The China Quarterly.

Professor Shambaugh has been selected for numerous awards and grants, including as a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Senior Scholar by the Phi Beta Kappa Society, a Senior Fulbright Scholar (at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Distinguished Research Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore, and other visiting appointments in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and Russia. An active public intellectual and frequent commentator in the international media, he serves on numerous editorial boards, and has been a consultant to governments, research institutions, foundations, universities, corporations, banks, and investment funds. As an author, Professor Shambaugh has published more than 30 books, including most recently Where Great Powers Meet: America & China in Southeast Asia and China & the World (both 2020).