Amid the bustling corridors of the China-ASEAN Expo, a steady stream of traders moves through the halls. Rising trade statistics continue to affirm the close bond between China and ASEAN as each other's largest trading partners. Yet a thought-provoking question emerges: with economic ties at an unprecedented level, how much do we genuinely understand this neighboring region?

On September 18, at the AI exhibition hall of Nanning International Convention and Exhibition Center, Guangxi Normal University Press hosted a signing and sharing event for the "Regional and Country Studies: ASEAN" book series. Scholars from home and abroad, publishing professionals, and overseas guests via video gathered to use academic publishing as a lever, aiming to fill the gaps in public knowledge about the region's historical depth and social nuances often overlooked.

The event took place in the AI exhibition hall, where the editor-in-chief of Guangxi Normal University Press, Tang Wenhui, remarked in his address: "Artificial intelligence is now reshaping industries and knowledge dissemination, while academic publishing promotes cultural exchange through humanistic values. This is both a gathering for the intelligent era and a dialogue for deep academic cultivation." In his view, "Economic and trade connectivity forms the backbone of cooperation, while people-to-people and cultural exchanges serve as its lifeblood. The long-standing friendship and deep mutual understanding between China and ASEAN rely not only on trade data and project collaboration but also on the nourishment of cultural interaction and heart-to-heart ties."

This is precisely the original vision behind the "Regional and Country Studies: ASEAN" series: to use academic publishing as a bridge, systematically mapping the historical context, urban transformations, and social fabric of China-ASEAN relations, thereby advancing bilateral ties from mere economic engagement to profound mutual comprehension.

Peter Schoppert, editor-in-chief of NUS Press in Singapore, delivered a keynote via video, proposing: "Studying Southeast Asia from an urban perspective is a vital pathway to understanding the region. The fragmented geography of Southeast Asia—with its islands, mountains, and tropical ecosystems—creates numerous small niches that also sustain cultural diversity." He introduced the academic concept of "desakota" (the integration of urban and rural socio-economic development) to describe the interwoven urban-rural landscapes of mega-urban regions like Jakarta and Surabaya, where a distinctive mix of governance and uneven planning authority prevails. The appearance of such a specialized term rooted in local urban textures at the expo also highlighted a practical gap: people often view ASEAN through macro narratives, lacking attention to the micro-level realities of ports, streets, ethnic groups, and archives.

The first batch of the series, comprising six titles, has now entered full translation. It adopts a multidisciplinary research perspective, covering fields such as urban history, ancient history, archaeology, anthropology, economics, and international relations. Chinese in Maritime Southeast Asia focuses on early Chinese cross-border trade networks and human exchange trajectories in the 17th-century Indonesian archipelago; The Banana Tree at the Gate interprets, from the micro perspective of Borneo's ethnic groups, how local communities became integrated into the global market; Jakarta: City of a Thousand Dimensions and Surababaya: A Socio-Economic History of a Work City, 1900–2000 vividly reconstruct the evolutionary paths and social ecosystems of core Southeast Asian cities; The Imperial Citadel of Thang Long: An Ancient Capital of Vietnam uses archaeological evidence to restore the historical lineage and cultural heritage of Vietnam's ancient capital; and Contemporary Southeast Asia analyzes the regional landscape and development trends in light of current circumstances.

Feng Lijun, deputy dean of the School of International Relations/Xiamen University's Research School for Southeast Asian Studies, stated candidly during a roundtable discussion: "ASEAN countries differ markedly in political systems, economic frameworks, religious traditions, and social structures. Regional and country-specific publishing helps us understand these nations' finer distinctions. A key feature of the first batch is that it avoids sweeping overviews; instead, it approaches from different disciplines, historical periods, and humanistic angles, allowing readers to gain a more detailed understanding of Southeast Asia." He suggested that the second batch should focus on excavating the history of commodity trade, population flows, trading ports, and knowledge generation between China and Southeast Asia, noting that "this direction will help the world and China better grasp the essence of China-ASEAN relations."

Looking ahead to the series' future topics, Chen Guobao, dean of Guangxi Normal University's Vietnam Research Institute, proposed key directions: exploring and organizing overseas documents and archives, such as Sino-Vietnamese archives, assistance-to-Vietnam records, and related hospital files; country-specific studies from a regional perspective; new fields like environmental history, medical social history, institutional history, women's history, and legal history; and field research on grassroots practices such as friendly border villages and hamlets along the Sino-Vietnamese frontier. This dual approach—focusing both on Southeast Asia as a whole and on individual countries—will allow the two levels to reinforce each other.