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Beyond Dichotomous Choices: Responses to Chinese Initiative in Southeast Asia

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Regional Powers and Contested Leadership

Abstract

Despite expectations that China’s power status will compel states to balance or bandwagon, the Southeast Asian experience suggests a more complicated story. While great power incentive structures clearly condition Southeast Asian choices, smaller states, moved by strongly held beliefs in self-determination, have complicated large power agendas and initiatives, even as they have sought new cooperation. Drawing on a growing literature on Southeast Asian strategy, this chapter considers a range of Southeast Asian responses as illustrations of states’ efforts to accommodate but also condition China’s role in Southeast Asia. Theoretically, it draws attention to both the changing and immutable conditions that shape Southeast Asian responses, the multidimensionality of Chinese power that complicates easy categorizations, and the social dynamism, not just the structural conditions, of China–Southeast Asian relations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As just a few examples reflective of how “hedging” has become a consensus term applied to a range of Southeast Asian countries , see Hiep 2013 (Vietnam); Kuik 2008 (Malaysia); Gindarsah 2016 (Indonesia); Chong 2017a (Singapore).

  2. 2.

    In a very different vein, Goh also prefers “influence” to “power” because it better captures questions of effect (Goh 2014).

  3. 3.

    See, for example, the comments of Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima and Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Laura Q. Del Rosario , both of whom expressed notable public support for the Asian Infrastructure Investment bank (AIIB), even while acknowledging the risk of Chinese leverage (Venzon 2014; Xinhua 2014).

  4. 4.

    Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) and Philippine Amphibious Landing Exercise (PHIBLEX) exercises were canceled in 2017.

  5. 5.

    See also views expressed by former President Fidel Ramos in Asian Politics &Policy (2012).

  6. 6.

    See, for example, Kausikan (2016), on Southeast Asian approaches to China.

  7. 7.

    See, for example, Snyder (2015), on the Five Power Defense Agreement with Australia and Ba (2009, 159–168) on how Malaysia justified its access arrangements with the United States in the 1990s.

  8. 8.

    In 2014, the exercise was just a tabletop exercise with the first live troop exercise in 2015.

  9. 9.

    As Kuik (2013) characterizes the Malaysian “anomaly”, “Waltzian variables” of geographic proximity, aggregate capability, and offensive capability should “make Malaysia one of the most likely cases (along with the Philippines and Vietnam) for the Waltian balance-of-threat propositions”. For a more detailed depiction of neorealist thinking on regional contestation, see the introductory chapter by Ebert and Flemes in this volume.

  10. 10.

    Kadir Mohamad , former Secretary-General of the Malaysian Foreign Ministry and former Foreign Policy Advisor to the prime minister, cited by Kuik 2013.

  11. 11.

    China’s nine-dash line claim does overlap with the Natunas Islands, which are Indonesia’s jurisdiction. Despite concerns and questions, Indonesia does not identify China among the countries with which it has outstanding border differences and moreover has very concertedly and publicly asserted that it is not a claimant.

  12. 12.

    Indonesian diplomat Noegroho Wisnomoerti quoted in Ku (1991).

  13. 13.

    Not only has this been a long-standing practice, but it was also one that China accepted and understood, given Singapore’s geographic constraints in military training. See Lee 2001, 418.

  14. 14.

    Lawrence Wong , Singapore’s National Development Minister, explains it differently—that the Forum was about functionally focused on potential states most likely to be sites for Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects . Singapore’s absence was thus not political but instead reflective of its different economic standing and relationship with BRI. There were also reports that China took umbrage at Singapore’s request for a formal invitation when other leaders did not request the same. (See K. Chong 2017b; Bloomberg 2017)

  15. 15.

    Because of the particular stress experienced in bilateral tensions, especially in 2015 and 2016, there was public speculation that the lack of a JCBC meeting that year was correlated; however, other reports cited scheduling challenges as reason for its postponement to February 2017.

  16. 16.

    As Yun Sun (2012) highlights, China’s own misunderstanding of this fact led to “several strategic … misjudgments”.

  17. 17.

    As he noted in making this remark, this is also commonly considered a critical measure by which to assess Vietnam’s national leaders.

  18. 18.

    For a discussion that details the domestic, especially elite, politics in driving both the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) agreement and its collapse, see Baviera 2014.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Alice D. Ba

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  1. GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany

    Hannes Ebert

  2. GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany

    Daniel Flemes

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Ba, A.D. (2018). Beyond Dichotomous Choices: Responses to Chinese Initiative in Southeast Asia. In: Ebert, H., Flemes, D. (eds) Regional Powers and Contested Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73691-4_7

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