China’s Southern Borderlands and ASEAN Higher Education: A Cartography of Connectivity

Abstract

Relations between China and the countries of ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) have been thickening, but are conventionally viewed through the lens of the economy. This does poor justice to the longstanding, and wide-ranging relations between the two, including knowledge relations. Focusing on China’s southern borderlands, and their knowledge relations with ASEAN, particularly in higher education, the complexity and evolution of relations is sketched by use of what is termed the Six Pillars, before a closer study of “Borderlands” University is undertaken, revealing close and evolving, if unequal, connections between China’s southern borderlands and Viet Nam. The analysis shows that both region and regionalism need to be problematized, including in higher education. While ASEAN is understood as a region, the range and depth of relations between China and ASEAN, increasingly including higher education relations, poses the question of the extent to which China-ASEAN should be understood as a region. Conventional conceptions of regulatory regionalism are also tested by the analysis, that shows much of cross-border flows to be illegal and irregular. Irregular regionalism is argued to be a better characterization of the relationship.