China builds Southeast Asia expertise as US lets it wither
Yet neither power will truly grasp this complex, diverse region if they continue to treat it merely as a geopolitical chessboard
The US is hollowing out the university-based programmes that have long trained its students in Southeast Asian languages, history and politics. China, conversely, is elevating area studies into a top-tier, state-backed academic field. Beyond a shift in academic funding, this divergence exposes a fundamental difference in the kind of knowledge each system values, and how those choices may shape each power’s ability to understand Southeast Asia’s complexity.
In the US, area studies have never been detached from national strategy, but the funding model has proved fragile. Historically, Title VI National Resource Centres and Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships were explicitly designed to serve national needs by supporting language training, research and public education. However, this foundation is now being abruptly dismantled. Following the sudden termination of federal Title VI funding in 2025, the US knowledge ecosystem has been pushed to the brink.
The consequences are immediate and visceral. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is closing all six of its area studies centres, including the Carolina Asia Centre. The University of Washington has had to seek emergency funding to prevent its Khmer language programme, one of only seven in the US, from disappearing entirely. This is an ecosystem that takes decades of fieldwork, language training and trust-building to cultivate, yet only a single budget cycle to hollow out.
Regional expertise often begins with knowledge not easily reduced to policy relevance: literature, local newspapers, archival sources, village politics, religious life, oral histories and conversations that do not fit neatly into policy memos. This is why universities matter. They sustain forms of inquiry whose value may not be visible during the next budget cycle. When funding is cut, it narrows the future pool of Americans who can study Southeast Asia in its own languages and on its own terms.
How expertise is funded, evaluated and rewarded affects what a country comes to know
This investment in learning should not be dismissed. China’s system can scale quickly, encourage language training, support policy research and align expertise with diplomatic priorities. But scale is not the same as understanding. China now boasts more than 300 research institutes dedicated to Southeast Asian studies, yet top-down directives shape which questions are asked. When area studies are explicitly tied to national strategy, scholars are incentivised to produce work that is current and politically legible. Such work has its value, but the top-down approach can also privilege short-term policy relevance over deeper social knowledge and ideological legibility over open-ended inquiry. Scholars of Southeast Asian studies in China have already noted this “policy turn”: rapid growth in language programmes, the dominance of short-term policy research and the marginalisation of the humanities.
This creates an asymmetry. The fragmented US model allows intellectual autonomy but is vulnerable to budget politics. China’s coordinated model can produce more region-focused personnel at scale, but risks treating Southeast Asia primarily as an object of policy. One system may generate too little expertise; the other, expertise too tightly organised around state priorities.
The point is not that American area studies are pure while Chinese area studies are instrumental. Both have been shaped by power. US area studies emerged in part from Cold War strategic anxieties, after all. Nor should one assume that Chinese scholars lack curiosity or independence. The narrower point is that the political economy of knowledge production matters. How expertise is funded, evaluated and rewarded affects what a country comes to know.
Southeast Asia is multilingual, religiously diverse, historically layered and politically heterogeneous. No great power will understand it well by treating the region merely as a chessboard. Washington should not assume that China’s top-down investments will automatically yield shallow knowledge. Beijing should not assume that more centres and majors will automatically produce deeper understanding. The real test is whether either country can sustain institutions that encourage people to read patiently, travel humbly, argue openly and take Southeast Asian agency seriously. Universities and think tanks in the region can shape how outsiders study it by expanding fellowships, joint research and immersive residencies that anchor regional expertise in local debates, languages and intellectual communities.
For the US, cutting regional studies while declaring Southeast Asia strategically important is self defeating. For China, building area studies as a strategic discipline may increase capacity, but not necessarily deeper appreciation or interpretive depth. The future contest over Southeast Asia will not only be fought with ships, summits and investments. It will also be shaped by who can understand the region beyond the limits of their own ambitions.