Recent years have seen growing concerns expressed by political leaders throughout the west about rising Chinese “influence” around the world. Yet measuring political influence remains a challenge to social science. In this paper, we seek to advance our understanding of influence by comparing the expressed attitudes towards China of elected officials within three Southeast Asian states (the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia) whose districts have received Chinese Belt and Road investments versus those who have not. Specifically, we interact a China-related foreign policy “shock” with sentiment analysis based on Twitter and Facebook posts. We find little support for the assertion that Chinese investments are leading to increased political influence in these countries, at least in terms of influencing the sentiments expressed by local politicians.