First, one needs to look beyond rankings to get a more granular understanding of China’s economic influence in Southeast Asia and the purported ‘dependence’ it creates. As the report notes, while China consistently appears among the top five ASEAN trade partners, the degree of dependence on China as a source of exports, imports, or both varies. In general, wealthier ASEAN countries have a more diversified set of trading partners, while poorer ones depend more heavily on China, especially for imports. The distribution of CHINESE EXPORTand import flows is also much more complex – Vietnam’s share of Chinese flows within ASEAN has increased a lot, but Singapore’s share has dropped. Given this, one should be careful about making sweeping statements about ASEAN states becoming pliant to Beijing.