Commentary The Chinese regime’s tactics of global domination largely focus on periphery diplomacy, strategically focusing on Southeast Asia, where Beijing has made some progress as seen by the shift of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s stance toward China. Southeast Asia includes the Indochina Peninsula and the Malay Archipelago. It is at a crossroad of Oceania, the Pacific Ocean, and the Indian Ocean, where the Strait of Malacca serves as a chokepoint, and covers land around 1.76 million square miles. The ten members of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) include Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. In 2019, the ten ASEAN member nations had a combined GDP of $3.17 trillion in 2019, less than a quarter of China’s GDP, and a population of 655 million, which is close to half of that of China and 142 million people more than the European Union’s (EU’s) total population. …