Southeast Asia has become the leading focus for the overseas operations of Japanese companies, which now send more cash and staffers there than to China in hopes of tapping the region’s growing economic potential, Nikkei Asian Review reports. Meanwhile on infrastructure development, Bloomberg reported that although China often made headlines when it comes to its infrastructure push across Southeast Asia, data from BMI Research shows Japan is still well ahead in funding projects in the region. Japan has maintained a similar level of engagement with each Southeast Asian country as China. For instance, visits between Japan and Indonesia were scarce at the beginning of the decade, but increased sharply since, likely due to increased Japanese-Indonesian security ties and Japanese disaster relief initiatives, writes Erin Gallagher for Foreign Policy Research Institute.