Silk Cage Series – Webinar IV: Corridors of Influence? The China–Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor and Beijing’s Expanding Power Architecture
Is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) fundamentally about development or about the architecture of influence? As China’s overseas connectivity projects mature, the debate is no longer confined to debt, infrastructure, or trade volumes. Increasingly, attention is turning to how corridors function as instruments of structural leverage, normative persuasion, and long-term strategic positioning. The China–Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor (CICPEC) offers a compelling case: a land–sea connectivity network linking southern China with mainland Southeast Asia and stretching toward maritime Southeast Asia, and, indirectly, into the wider Indian Ocean theatre.
Within the framework of the Silk Cage Series that the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs (SCSA-IPA) holds under its broader research project on ‘The Silk Noose: China’s Power Architecture in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region (IOR)’, this webinar moves beyond South Asia to examine how China’s continental corridors interface with maritime strategy, influence operations, and geopolitical contestation. If earlier discussions explored Xi Jinping’s Three Global Initiatives, the CPEC, the Bay of Bengal, and the BCIM space, this webinar situates CICPEC within a larger arc connecting the South China Sea (SCS) to the Bay of Bengal and onward into the IOR.
The CICPEC is often presented as a model of economic integration, linking China to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore through railways, highways, pipelines, and digital networks. Yet such infrastructure is not politically neutral. As part of China’s expanding power architecture, corridors increasingly operate as platforms through which Beijing shapes regulatory environments, embeds technological standards, deepens security ties, and advances narratives of non-interference and “shared development.”
This is particularly significant when viewed from a South Asia–IOR lens. China’s strategy does not operate in isolated theatres. Rather, it integrates continental corridors with maritime nodes: ports, logistics hubs, and digital infrastructures that connect Southeast Asia’s eastern seaboard to the SCS and westward toward the Bay of Bengal. In this sense, CICPEC complements China’s presence in Myanmar’s Kyaukphyu port, its engagement in the Mekong sub-region, and its broader Indian Ocean ambitions. Together, these elements create layered connectivity that strengthens Beijing’s capacity to shape economic flows, political alignments, and security perceptions across adjoining regions.
Influence operations along CICPEC manifest differently across political contexts. In Laos and Cambodia, economic dependence intersects with elite networks and governance structures. In Vietnam and Thailand, balancing strategies and domestic political calculations complicate Chinese leverage. Across the corridor, digital infrastructure, energy investments, railway financing, and special economic zones generate new patterns of structural influence that go beyond traditional diplomacy. At the same time, Southeast Asian states retain agency. ASEAN frameworks, national industrial strategies, and engagement with alternative partners, including Japan, India, the EU, and the United States, introduce contestation into the corridor space. If we see it from a broader strategic prism, the result is not a monolithic sphere of control but a negotiated terrain where power is embedded, resisted, and recalibrated.
For the Silk Cage project, this raises an important analytical question: is China constructing not just corridors, but an interlinked power architecture stretching from continental Southeast Asia into the Indian Ocean? If South Asia represents a central theatre of this architecture, CICPEC illustrates how adjacent regions reinforce and sustain it. Understanding this linkage is critical for assessing how China’s influence operations travel across geographies, from the Mekong basin to the Bay of Bengal, and from the SCS to the wider Indo-Pacific maritime domain. This Silk Cage webinar-IV will therefore explore:
- Is the China–Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor primarily developmental, or is it a strategic instrument within China’s broader power architecture?
- How do influence operations vary across political systems in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand?
- In what ways does CICPEC connect the South China Sea theatre with the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean Region?
- Does corridor participation enhance state agency or embed new forms of structural dependence?
- How effective are alternative connectivity initiatives in providing counterweights to Chinese influence?
- What does CICPEC reveal about the future trajectory of China’s continental–maritime integration strategy?
As the fourth instalment in the Silk Cage Series, this webinar seeks to deepen our understanding of how connectivity evolves into architecture and how architecture, in turn, reshapes the strategic landscape from Southeast Asia to the Indian Ocean.
Speakers:
Dr. Bill Hayton is an Associate Fellow, Asia-Pacific Programme, Chatham House, UK. He is a former BBC journalist, the author of four books on Asia, and the editor of the academic journal Asian Affairs. He was the BBC’s reporter in Vietnam in 2006-7 and was seconded to the public broadcaster in Myanmar in 2013-14. Bill is the author of Vietnam: Rising Dragon (Yale 2010, second edition 2020) and A Brief History of Vietnam (Tuttle, 2022). He has written two other books: The South China Sea: the struggle for power in Asia (Yale, 2014) and The Invention of China (Yale, 2020), and numerous articles on Asian issues. In 2019, he received his PhD from the University of Cambridge for work on the history and development of the South China Sea disputes. Bill worked for the BBC for 22 years until January 2021, and he is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Dr. Katarzyna Anna Nawrot is a Polish economist and international relations scholar at the Department of Regional and Global Studies, Faculty of Political Sciences and International Studies, University of Warsaw. She is Deputy Chair of the Committee for Future Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences and serves as Plenipotentiary of the Vice-Rector for Research for cooperation with the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). She holds a PhD in Economics from Poznan University of Economics and Business and a DSc in Social Sciences. Her research focuses on development economics, international economics, and Asia-Pacific regional cooperation and integration, including Southeast Asia and China. She has held fellowships at Harvard Kennedy School, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and Central South University in China.
Captain Kentaro Furuya (JCG) is a Professor at the Japan Coast Guard Academy, Adjunct Professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Keio University, and the World Maritime University (Malmö, Sweden). Since joining the JCG in 1988, he has held diverse leadership roles in operational and strategic areas, including maritime search and rescue, counter-terrorism, and law enforcement. His research focuses on the Law of the Sea, maritime security, and Coast Guard policy formulation, with publications in leading journals including International Law Studies and Naval War College Review. He teaches legal and maritime security issues to domestic and international students.
Ms. Angeline Tan is an analyst in the Foreign Policy and Security Studies team at ISIS Malaysia. Her primary research looks into Chinese foreign policy, including the Belt and Road Initiative and the South China Sea. She is also interested in Japan’s strategic approaches to Southeast Asia and the impact of the US-China tech rivalry on the region. In particular, she has been researching the chip war and its implications in the Indo-Pacific.
Dr. Rajeev Ranjan Chaturvedy is an interdisciplinary Associate Professor in the School of Historical Studies/International Studies at Nalanda University. He is the founding Coordinator of the Centre for Bay of Bengal Studies and the head of the School of International Relations and Peace Studies (SIPS) at Nalanda University. His research and teaching interests include India’s Foreign Policy, the Bay of Bengal Region, India’s Maritime and Economic History, Regional Security and Developments, China-Southern Asia Strategic Access, and Modern World History.
Moderator:
Dr. Jagannath Panda is the Head of the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs (SCSA-IPA) at the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP), Sweden. Dr. Panda is also a Senior Fellow at The Hague Center for Strategic Studies in the Netherlands. As a senior expert on China, East Asia, and Indo-Pacific affairs, Prof. Panda has testified to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission at the US Congress on ‘China and South Asia’. He is the Series Editor for Routledge Studies on Think Asia.
Previous webinars in the Silk Cage Series are available here.