Martin Stuart-Fox is a professor of history at the University of Queensland and an expert in Southeast Asian history and politics. He is the author of The Murderous Revolution: Life and Death in Pol Pot's Kampuchea, Laos: Politics, Economics and Society, and A History of Laos.

China, the world's most populous nation, has always exerted great influence on the traditional kingdoms and modern states of Southeast Asia. Today, history and culture continue to shape the modern relationship. In this concise volume, Martin Stuart-Fox charts the history of relations between China and Southeast Asia across two millennia, examining patterns of diplomacy, commercial networks and migration, and explaining how these have varied over time. He shows how China's traditional world view was disrupted by the modern order of sovereign nation states, how the country struggled to adapt through its "century of humiliation" from the opium wars to the proclamation of the People's Republic in 1949 and how, since then, China has sought to restore its standing in the world.