From The Bangkok Post:

Japanese businesses are expected to shift their investment away from China and pour new funds into Southeast Asia over the next several years. Business leaders and policymakers attending the two-day Asean-Japan Business meeting this week agreed that now was the right time for new investment in Asean given its solid recovery from the 1997-98 crisis and Japan’s emergence from a decade of stagnation.

Japanese investors, the biggest investors in Asean for three decades, had slowed the pace of investment in the region in the years following the crisis and had been increasing investment in mainland China instead.