Geography is not an opinion, is a hard fact. NLD, Suu Ky’s party, was the leading opposition party against the military junta and it was very skeptic against China. However, today the Chinese colossus is just at the border and NLD delegations are flying to Communist China.

Siwage Negara is a Senior Fellow at ISEAS and Co-coordinator of the Indonesia Studies Programme. Siwage believes that Jokowi will be capable to unleash Indonesia's full economic potential in his last term, by lowering hight taxation and reducing the staggering national bureaucracy. Speaking about European engagement and FDI in Southeast Asia, Siwage admitted that most of the European investments are flooding in Singapore and Vietnam, the new rising star of the region. However, he believes that if the EU stops with its moralistic approach over Indonesian palm oil, the relationship between the biggest economy on SEA and EU can flourish and can be brought to a new level.

Bridget Welsh is Associate Professor of Political Science at John Cabot University. Bridget believes that nowadays ordinary Southeast Asians have negative perceptions of China. She argues that this trend is noticeable through the lens of the elections: in Malaysia, China was a very important theme during the campaign, the same in Indonesia and in the Philippines. According to Bridget, China is clearly facing a political backlash on Southeast Asia.

That is the reason why ASEAN countries are in desperate need to diversify and to seek different strong economic partnerships with other actors in the world stage. Among them, European countries can be an alternative and more reliable player than China. On the one hand, bilateral economic partnerships are flourishing, especially with countries like France, UK, Italy and Germany. On the other hand, a holistic and strategic partnership between ASEAN and EU will face hurdles, principally due to the unwillingness of the EU officials to compromise over palm oil production in Malaysia and Indonesia. According to Bridget, the EU-ASEAN strategic partnership is currently going nowhere.

Phidel Vineles is a Senior Analyst in the Science and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) in the Office of the Executive Deputy Chairman at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.
Phidel believes that Duterte is in desperate need of investments from China, but with one problem: the benefits need to go only to Duterte's local community, his political stronghold. However, Phidel believes that other investors, especially Europeans, can play an important role in the region by providing skills to boost connectivity, especially in redesigning smart cities.

Emmanuel Daniel is a Singapore-based entrepreneur. Daniel founded The Asian Banker in Singapore in September 1996 as a publisher of research and benchmarking, and events catering to the financial services industry. Daniel won the Citibank Excellence in Journalism Award for the Asian region in February 1999 for his work in determining the impact of the Internet on banking.
Emmanuel believes that Mahathir political life has been divided into two phases: the first when he was in love with Japanese technological growth and the second, which represent the current situation, when he has to deal pragmatically with a very powerful China. Mahathir can't say no to Chinese investments, but he can emend the mistakes made by his predecessors. According to Emmanuel, Mahathir did it with a very pragmatic renegotiation of projects such as the East Coast Rail Link.

Ms. Murphy served as the special assistant to the Office of the Special Representative and Policy Coordinator for Burma (Myanmar). In addition, Murphy is the founder of Inle Advisory. In the conservation with her, there are three very important points: the importance for Southeast Asian countries of having a strong cohort of technocrats, which can save countries from an over-politicized public discourse, the high reputational risk of investing into some ASEAN countries, namely Myanmar, The Philippines and Vietnam and finally the need for ASEAN to have an alternative source of investments, one that can be less aggressive and more accountable than the BRI. She made clearly the case for a major presence of both American and European investments, which can improve both the standard of living of the most impoverished zones and provide a more accountable stream of investments in the region.

Thailand is an exception in the melting pot of Southeast Asia. Differently from Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, where minorities coexist quite peacefully, in Thailand’s deep South the Malay insurgency is carrying on low-fi warfare against Thai State.

Like other countries in the region, Thailand has also its share of economic uncertainties: it risks to find itself in the middle-income trap. It is trying with the Thailand 4.0 program, but the reality is that the country needs foreign investments. America and Europe are well-positioned to provide investments, but Chinese money comes, as usual, with no strings attached. Westerners pretend to force Thailand to kowtow over human rights issues, while Chinese turns a blind eye. No doubt that Thai people prefer Beijing.

Azmil Tayeb is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang. He has done extensive research on Islamic politics and social movements, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia. His point is clear: Europe must engage more with Southeast Asia, and European countries have to compete with China in order to provide investments, especially in infrastructures.

Ei Sun OH is a Senior Fellow at Singapore Institute of International Affairs and former Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he researches on the political economy of Asia Pacific, and Southeast Asia’s interactions with China. Previously, Ei Sun served as Political Secretary to the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Ei Sun Oh believes that in Southeast Asia, the success of a business operation still depends on the state-of-the-art of politics. The political risk connected with electoral cycles, for instance, needs to be taken into consideration for businessmen that want to thrive in a difficult environment.

Kevin O’Rourke holds a degree in government from Harvard University and he is the author of the book Reformasi: The Struggle for Power in Post-Soeharto Indonesia. He worked in Jakarta starting in 1994.
According to O'Rourke, Widodo must focus his second term on boosting the economy. Nevertheless, Widodo's governance style of searching every time for the vastest political consensus had a negative tool on policymaking, which often became slow and ineffective.