Seas of Change - The Effects of China's Naval Modernisation on Southeast Asia.

Abstract

China‘s naval modernisation and assertiveness in the South China Seas (SCS) is causing major concerns for Southeast Asia. While substantial scholarship documents how Southeast Asian states have employed a ‗hedging‘ strategy, chartering middle way approaches between engagement/bandwagoning and containment/balancing, new evidence provided by this study suggest recent developments in China‘s naval and maritime policy over the past 5 years is pushing Southeast Asian states to recalibrate their individual hedging policies towards measures that more resembles balancing. Though a comparative study of reactions to China‘s naval rise from the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore, this thesis updates existing scholarship by with two key findings: First, caused by increase Chinese naval modernisation and its activities in the SCS, there is a region wide shift towards negative threat perceptions and increased balancing measures. Second, variances in responses by individual states can be explained by a hybrid model proposed by this thesis amalgamating and amending Walt‘s Balance of Threat theory with Kuik‘s Spectrum of Hedging Responses, explaining how Economic Dependence, Historic memory and Geographic Proximity of Interests inform the extent of balancing measures of each state‘s reaction to China‘s naval rise.