Asia Institute - Theses
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ItemSmaller Players’ Strategic Choices: the Philippines’ and Vietnam’s Responses to a Rising China on the South China Sea Issue( 2022-11)This thesis aims to explain the divergent strategies of the Philippines and Vietnam vis-a-vis China on the South China Sea from 1991 to 2016. Although each state shares a common geo-strategic environment and an enormous power imbalance compared to China, the Philippines oscillated between accommodation and confrontation, whereas Vietnam adopted a moderate position throughout. Employing neoclassical realism, this thesis attributes this contrast to unit-level factors, namely the two states’ distinct views of China and the United States, and their contrasting domestic political dynamics. Specifically, the Philippines held a neutral view of China in the sense of lacking a longstanding distrust of China as a threat to its national security, whereas Vietnam was preoccupied with deep-rooted suspicion of China’s territorial ambitions and fear of China’s possible punishment for acting against its interest. The two countries’ views of China evolved out of their accumulated experience of interaction with the northern neighbour from pre-colonial times to the late Cold War years, in the maritime domain, and in economic arena. Such ideational differences defined the varying degree to which each country accommodated to or balanced against China, even though they both faced a similar geo-strategic landscape in the Asia-Pacific region. Moreover, the Philippines had positive expectations of its alliance with the United States while Vietnam felt mistrust of power politics and the United States, again based in distinct historical experiences. The Philippines’ and Vietnam’s respective views, in turn, led to the former’s policy of balancing with the United States against China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea and the latter’s cautious stance on Vietnam-U.S. political and defence engagement. The Philippines’ personality-driven foreign policymaking was also more conducive to dramatic shifts in position on the South China Sea issue vis-a-vis Beijing, compared to Vietnam’s collective decision-making process, which promoted relative consistency. Together, all three of these dynamics have remained pivotal in shaping the Philippines’ and Vietnam’s South China Sea policies from 2016 to mid-2022. The findings of this comparative study underline the explanatory power of neoclassical realism to account for variations in state foreign policies under similar structural constraints and incentives. This contribution is amplified because this thesis applies the same analytical mechanism to understand shifting foreign policy dynamics over an unusually long timeframe of 25 years. Its approach can guide analysis of the specific policy paths that other smaller states such as Malaysia have followed. In the policy realm, by revealing the influence of the Philippines’ and Vietnam’s divergent images of China and distinct characteristics of their political-institutional structures on the two countries’ South China Sea policies, this thesis could guide ASEAN countries to shape Code of Conduct negotiations. Its insights into the Philippines’ and Vietnam’s different expectations of alliance politics can also help major powers map out practical initiatives to enhance strategic cooperation with these two Southeast Asian nations, such as through various frameworks of the Quad, ASEAN Plus and ASEAN’s Dialogue Partnership.
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ItemChina’s intervention policies in the Middle East and North Africa during the late-Obama era( 2020)This thesis considers the role of the United States as a conditioning factor for China’s intervention practices in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), with a particular focus on three cases studies during the late-Obama era: the external interventions in Libya during 2011, the Syrian civil war, and the multilateral involvement in the Iranian nuclear proliferation case. Drawing from the most recent field interviews with stakeholders involved in the three cases and a comprehensive review and content analysis of daily statements and communications between the highest levels of the Chinese government and the Obama administration, this thesis argues that Beijing’s perception of the American-led interventions in MENA during the late-Obama era is a major conditioning variable in its decision to balance against, hedge, or cooperate with the United States. More importantly, this thesis illustrates that in addition to unit-level and localized explanations of Chinese interventions, a structurally and power-oriented analysis enhances existing understanding of how and why China intervenes in MENA and other regions contested by the two major powers.
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ItemFinancial sustainability of the pension system in China: Impact of fragmented administration and population ageing( 2020)With a rapidly ageing population and a highly fragmented pension system divided into over 2,000 pools managed separately by local governments, the financial sustainability of the Chinese pension system is facing serious challenges. This study aims to investigate the impact of fragmentation and population ageing on pension sustainability in China. By examining the history of pension reform and policy evolution in the context of overall development of China, the study conducts an analysis on the consequences of fragmentation based on both evidence obtained from fieldwork and secondary data including policy documents and official statistics. The distortion in incentives for local governments is documented in case studies covering both the coastal and inland regions. These case studies demonstrate how pension sustainability is compromised by various adverse effects produced by fragmentation, such as the moral hazard caused by the disarticulated intergovernmental fiscal responsibility. An overlapping generations (OLG) model is updated with the latest demographic data and used to perform a prospective assessment of the impact of population ageing on pension sustainability in China and to help determine whether adjustment in retirement age can ensure long-term financial sustainability under various demographic scenarios in the rest of the century. Overall, the findings of this research reveal that, compared to the population ageing, the issues stemming from the fragmentation pose a more insidious threat to pension sustainability in China. The retirement age reform alone can only provide a necessary but not sufficient condition for ensuring the system’s long-run financial sustainability, abstracting from the significant negative impact of the fragmentation. Problems of moral hazard such as noncompliance by local governments and challenges of adverse selection resulting from the administrative loopholes in the highly decentralised system, if left unchecked, are classic reasons why insurance policies including pension schemes go bankrupt. Therefore, if China wants to ensure the long-term sustainability of the pension system, it is imperative to take its reform to the next level by defragmenting the system. The possibility of the fertility cliff and the danger of the de facto bankruptcy brought by the population ageing further highlight the urgency to address the fragmentation as the underlying cause of the many defects of the system that are damaging pension sustainability.
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ItemChinese Language Use by School-aged Chinese Australians: From a Dual-track Culturalisation Perspective( 2020)Over the past decades, the topic of Chinese immigrants has attracted wide attention and increasing academic interest, due to the rapid growth of Chinese immigration across the globe. However, many existing viewpoints are mainstream-centric, homogeneous and dated. To overcome the current research problems and elaborate Chinese immigrants’ culturalisation process through one important factor—language use—this research takes school-aged Chinese Australians as a case study, analysing their use of Chinese language from a dual-track culturalisation perspective. The 2016 Australian Census reveals that over 1.2 million people in the country claim their Chinese ancestry (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018). Among them, people who regard Mandarin and Cantonese as the most preferred language to speak at home are 46% and 22% respectively, which jointly contributes to the prevalence of Chinese language use in the Chinese community in Australia. This drew our attention to why and how school-aged Chinese Australians learn and use Chinese language and how its use influences the construction and reconfiguration of their ethnic and cultural identity. Drawing upon interviews and participant observation, this study addresses the research questions above by presenting the complex decision-making process of Chinese immigrant families and the dynamic relations between the broad cultural environment at macro level, the Chinese community in Australia and Chinese families at micro level, and school-aged Chinese Australians themselves. The findings of this research project contribute to our understanding of international migrant children’s culturalisation process, through their language use and multidimensional identity negotiation, and highlight school-aged Chinese Australians’ agency in the transformation of the immigrant community in Australia via their dual-track language practices. Though research findings in this study are based on the case of Chinese-Australian children and adolescents, many aspects of their experience could be shared by immigrants in other age groups and of other ethnicities, due to the representativeness of Chinese immigrants as one of the largest immigrant groups and Australia as a typical immigrant country.