Publication Year: 2020
China-Vietnamese Relations in the Era of Rising China: Power, Resistance, and Maritime Conflict
DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2020.1852737
Abstract: In the twenty-first century, China and Vietnam have experienced heightened conflict over their disputes in the South China Sea. But Chinese policy and the writings of Chinese observers make clear that, for China, this conflict is a struggle between a great power and its smaller neighbor over China’s demand for a sphere of influence on its borders. Since 1949, the People’s Republic of China has consistently maintained that Vietnam reject strategic cooperation with an extra-regional power. For Vietnam, however, China’s looming presence poses an existential threat that drives Vietnamese leaders to seek support from extra-regional powers. Since 2010, China has relied on coercive diplomacy and threats of crisis escalation to constrain Vietnamese reliance on outside powers, especially the United States, to challenge Chinese interests.
Publication Year: 2020
The Indo-Pacific Strategy and US Alliance Network Expandability: Asian Middle Powers’ Positions on Sino-US Geostrategic Competition in Indo-Pacific Region
DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2020.1766909
Abstract: Will the US-led Indo-Pacific strategy lead to an extensive alliance network against China? This article shifts focus to non-Quad Asian states—in particular, Indonesia, Vietnam, and South Korea—that face a strategic dilemma in the US-China competition and examines their positions regarding a rising China and the Indo-Pacific strategy. While reluctant to join the US strategy for the Indo-Pacific region, Asian middle powers now aim to tame, rather than contain, China despite their slight variations of response to the Indo-Pacific strategy. The US and its three partners—Japan, India, and Australia—have not been successful yet in recruiting new members to their coalition, mainly because of the declining hegemon’s (seemingly) weakened commitment to a liberal international order and the rising challenger’s (potential) opposition and punishment.
Publication Year: 2021
Maritime Issues and Regional Order in the Indo-Pacific
Abstract: This edited volume examines the political and security issues influencing and shaping the developing maritime order in the Indo Pacific. If focuses specifically on the impact of China’s maritime expansion upon the policies and strategies of the regional states as well as the major players. The chapters examine the interaction of these players, paying particular attention to Japan, as the originator of the Indo Pacific idea and promoter of security cooperation and regionalism. It also covers the responses of the ASEAN claimants, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines as well as Indonesia, alongside the key players, India, the US and also the EU.
Publication Year: 2021
Russia in the Indo-Pacific: New Approaches to Russian Foreign Policy
Abstract: This volume zones in on Russia’s relations with the Indo-Pacific region through the lens of theoretical pluralism, presenting alternatives to the mainstream Realist view of Russia as a major power using geopolitical strategies to establish itself.
Russia in the Indo-Pacific is an understudied topic that needs a fresh perspective. Contributors to this volume are based across Russia, China, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the USA, drawing on a range of multinational perspectives and theoretical approaches encompassing realism and liberalism, constructivism and the English school of international relations. Reflecting a trend of internationalization in the Russian study of IR, such theoretical pluralism could facilitate Russian contributions to emerging global IR theory.
Russia in the Indo-Pacific contributes towards a more intelligible common discourse in the Indo-Pacific, of interest to students and scholars of Sino-Russian relations, Indo-Pacific international relations, and international relations theory. It will also be of interest to policymakers and general readers following foreign policy and economic trends in the Indo-Pacific who want to better understand Russia’s role.
Publication Year: 2021
Quad Plus and Indo-Pacific: The Changing Profile of International Relations
Abstract: This book explores how the Quad Plus mechanism is set to reshape the global multilateral economic and security co-operations between Quad partner countries and the rest of the world.
With the Quad partners – Australia, India, Japan and the United States – seeing deteriorating ties with China, the book provides a holistic understanding of the reasons why Quad Plus matters and what it means for the post-COVID Indo-Pacific and Asian order. It goes beyond the existing literature of the global Post-COVID reality and examines how Quad Plus can grow and find synergy with national and multilateral Indo-Pacific initiatives. The chapters analyze the mechanism’s uncharacteristic yet active approach of including countries like South Korea, Israel, Brazil, New Zealand and ASEAN/Vietnam for their successful handling of the pandemic crisis, thereby reshaping the new world’s geopolitical vision.
A unique study focused solely on the intricacies and the broader dialogue of the ‘Quad Plus’ narrative, the book caters to strategic audiences as well as academics researching International Relations, Politics, and Indo-Pacific and Asian Studies.
Abstract
Vietnam’s perception of China is nuanced and complex, a mixture of challenge and opportunity. Given its geographic proximity and overwhelming power, China represents a permanent strategic challenge Vietnam cannot escape. However, the two countries are partners in the defence of socialist ideals and communist rule. These circumstances have clearly shaped Vietnam’s China policy, which is a mixture of cooperation and struggle. Vietnam’s strategy is not about confronting China directly but finding a way to live with and benefit from its power.
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Abstract
When confronted with an external provocation, do governments with control over the domestic media environment respond with hawkish propaganda to stir up nationalist sentiments? Vietnam’s propaganda strategy during the 2014 Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil rig crisis with China is used as a case to answer this question. Based on an analysis of 570 Vietnamese newspaper articles, I argue that Vietnam managed to adopt a middle approach that included tough rhetoric to criticize Chinese actions, but also avoided overplaying the nationalist card. Instead of openly intensifying anti-China sentiments, the government tried to channel popular anger and animosity into a more positive form of pro-government nationalism. The media highlighted the need for national unity, encouragement for maritime enforcement officers, relief for affected fishermen, and above all, confidence in the government’s ability to resolve the situation. Contentious historical issues between China and Vietnam were downplayed in the process. This finding helps to shed light on the development of anti-foreign nationalism in Vietnam. While leaders are compelled to respond strongly to a real provocation, they try to keep a lid on anti-China sentiments for reasons of domestic stability.
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Summary
What are Beijing’s objectives towards the developing world and how they have evolved and been pursued over time? Featuring contributions by recognized experts, China Steps Out analyzes and explains China’s strategies in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Africa, Middle East, and Latin America, and evaluates their effectiveness. This book explains how other countries perceive and respond to China’s growing engagement and influence. Each chapter is informed by the functionally organized academic literature and addresses a uniform set of questions about Beijing’s strategy. Using a regional approach, the authors are able to make comparisons among regions based on their economic, political, military, and social characteristics, and consider the unique features of Chinese engagement in each region and the developing world as a whole. China Steps Out will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese foreign policy, comparative political economy, and international relations.
Summary
Asia after the Developmental State presents cutting-edge analyses of state-society transformation in Asia under globalisation. The volume incorporates a variety of political economy and public policy oriented positions, and collectively explores the uneven evolution of new public management and neoliberal agendas aimed at reordering state and society around market rationality. Taken together, the contributions explore the emergence of marketisation across Asia, including China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam – what is now often described as the world’s most economically dynamic region – and the degree to which marketisation has taken root, in what forms, and how this is impacting state, society and market relationships.
Summary
Japan’s Foreign Relations in Asia has been specifically designed to introduce students to Japan’s foreign relations in Asia since 1990, a period in which there have been dramatic developments in Japan, including the reinterpretation of the Constitution and expanded US–Japan defence cooperation. The geopolitical dynamics and implications of these new developments are profound and underscore the need for a new textbook on this subject.
Covering not only the key regional players of China and the Koreas, this textbook also encompasses chapters on Japan’s relations with India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand, along with its multilateral engagement and initiatives. Combined with transnational chapters on critical issues, key themes covered by this book include:
- An historical overview of key post-war developments.
- Japan’s evolving security policy.
- Analysis of the region’s escalating maritime disputes.
- An evaluation of Japanese soft power in Asia.
Written by leading experts in accessible, jargon-free style, this new textbook will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students of Japanese politics, international relations and foreign policy and Asian affairs in general.
Abstract
This article examines the dramatic shifts that Vietnam’s foreign policy has undergone over time, from a country tightly allied with Socialist partners like China and the Soviet Union to one that has diversified its strategic partners and foresworn alliances in order to protect its strategic autonomy. Vietnam’s adoption of Doi Moi or economic renovation led Vietnam to multilateralize and expand its economic and political partnerships in the quest for economic growth. Doi Moi’s success has produced a transformation in state–society relations as the rise in civil society organizations has weakened the VCP’s hegemonic grip on society and shifted the basis of regime legitimacy from nationalism and socialist ideology to performance legitimacy. As public opinion and elite factionalism play an increasing role in Vietnam foreign policy, managing Vietnam’s external ties has become increasingly difficult. This article concludes that public opinion regarding relations with China has become so toxic that it poses a serious challenge to the political legitimacy of Vietnam’s one-party regime should it fail to deter Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea.
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Abstract
The privatization stampede represented the ascendancy of neoclassical economics and the view that governments should get out of business and leave the invisible hand of the market to either generate efficiency in often poorly performing enterprises or simply close them down (World Bank 1995, 1996, 1997). Privatization was slow to gain traction in Asia, where the idea of state ownership was firmly entrenched (Cheung 2002; Deutsch 1988; Gomez 1997; Gupta 2008), but driven by the need to fix government budgets and the unrelenting promotion of privatization by the international financial institutions, Asian governments began to accept SOE reform. The first case involves the privatization of Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), the giant SOE that had a national monopoly on electricity generation and supply. Seung-Ho Kwon and Joseph Kim trace the long history of KEPCO’s privatization and highlight the political battles that have taken place in which the proponents justify their actions in terms of efficiency gains while the opposition utilizes the notion of public value to question official intentions. In both cases we see the mounting political pressures for economic reform that derived from poor economic performance under central planning.
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Abstract
This article critically assesses how Vietnam-U.S. relations have evolved over the 42 years since Vietnam’s reunification in 1975. By dividing the development of Vietnam-U.S. relations into three main phases—1975-2000, 2001-2008, and 2009-the present—it analyzes the steps taken by both Hanoi and Washington to heal and build their relations. Using Vietnamese and U.S. sources, the article demonstrates why Vietnam-U.S. relations have transformed dramatically and what factors have contributed to the unusually positive relationship between Vietnam and the United States since the diplomatic normalization in 1995.
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Vietnam-India relations have been nurtured over several centuries. In recent years, the bilateral political relationship has been upgraded to strategic and comprehensive strategic partnership in 2007 and 2016, respectively. There has also been proactive growth in all sectors of the bilateral relationship, across economic, cultural and strategic dimensions, including maritime cooperation. In the context of increasing security challenges and threats to the freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea, along with other non-traditional security issues in the maritime domain such as piracy and terrorism, there is a critical need for an enhanced Vietnam-India maritime cooperation. This paper examines the current status of maritime cooperation between Vietnam and India, and affirms urgent requirements making two countries deepen their maritime cooperation.
Abstract
Perspectives from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam show that South Korea’s middle power role in Southeast Asia is confined to economics and capacity building. Despite being absent from Southeast Asia’s geostrategic calculus, Korea’s non-revisionist inclination is seen to be advantageous in its pursuit of enhanced middle power status.
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