Power Politics and the Institutional Architecture in the Mekong Subregion:

The author would like to thank the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Bangkok and the Mekong Institute for their kind invitation. [...] Introduction Against the backdrop of a war in Ukraine and Sino-US geopolitical rivalry in the third decade of twenty-first century, the Mekong Subregion is turning into a new flashpoint in the Indo- Pacific. [...] China under Xi Jinping aspires to engage with the institutional governance rivalry in the Mekong by setting its own multilateral framework of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) in 2016.7 First, the LMC is Beijing’s attempt to seek a minilateral organisation in the Mekong whose membership is restricted to the five riparian states and does not include any other extra-regional major powers and deve. [...] Amid the great power rivalry, the MUSP seeks to strengthen America’s leadership role in the Mekong and to counterbalance the spread of China’s influence down the river and into mainland Southeast Asia. [...] Within the MUSP framework, “The Friends of the Mekong” has been established whose membership extends to the lower Mekong countries, Australia, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, the US, together with financial institutions like the ADB, the MRC, and the World Bank.