EVELYN GOH
The Modes of China’s Influence
Cases from Southeast Asia
ABSTRACT
Distinguishing between power as resources and influence as converting those
resources into outcomes, I propose a new framework for analyzing China’s influence,
using examples from Southeast Asia. Because China exercises influence predominantly in contexts of convergent, not divergent, preferences, three key modes of
influence are ‘‘preference multiplying,’’ ‘‘persuasion,’’ and ‘‘ability to prevail.’’
K E Y W O R D S : China, Southeast Asia, influence, power, preference multiplier
T HAT C HINA IS ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL states in the world is no
longer a contested claim. Numerous studies detailing the People’s Republic
of China’s (PRC) growing economic, military, and political resources suggest
how it is altering international structures and global order.1 While this literature helps us to appreciate the changing global distribution of power, it often
either assumes that material power automatically generates certain responses
from others, or makes ambitious claims about Chinese ‘‘soft’’ power.2 Furthermore, most authors concentrate only on what China does or wants. They
E VELYN G OH is the Shedden Professor of Strategic Policy Studies at the Australian National University. She thanks John Ciorciari, Rosemary Foot, Michael Glosny, Avery Goldstein, William
Wohlforth, Michael J. Williams, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful suggestions in developing this article. This article and the three that follow by Foot and Inboden, Ciorciari, and Reilly
resulted from a November 2013 conference on ‘‘Rising China’s Influence in Developing Asia,’’ at Royal
Holloway, University of London. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation’s generous sponsorship of this event. Email: <[email protected]>.
1. For example, Michael Swaine et al., ‘‘China’s Military and the U.S.-Japan Alliance in 2030:
A Strategic Net Assessment,’’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Report, May 3, 2013;
Larry Wortzel, The Dragon Extends Its Reach: Chinese Military Power Goes Global (Dulles, Va.:
Potomac Books, 2013); Shaun Breslin, China and the Global Political Economy (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009).
2. John Mearsheimer, ‘‘China’s Unpeaceful Rise,’’ Current History 105 (April 2006), pp. 160–62;
Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007); Zheng Yongnian and Zhang Chi, ‘‘Soft Power in
Asian Survey, Vol. 54, Number 5, pp. 825–848. ISSN 0004-4687, electronic ISSN 1533-838X. © 2014
by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission
to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and
Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/AS.2014.54.5.825.
825
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826 ASIAN SURVEY 54:5
thus tell us relatively little about how ‘‘powerful’’ China actually is. This
article—and the wider project of which it is a part—argues that the more
useful question is: how effectively does China make use of its growing power
resources to get what it wants?
To answer this question, we need to make two analytical moves. First, we
need to move beyond scorecards enumerating different categories of power,
toward more sophisticated analysis of how and how effectively China converts its resources into control over other international actors and their policy
decisions, in order to achieve particular ends. Second, we need to investigate
explicitly how the targets of China’s exercises of power react, and why they
make the choices that they do. This emphasis on tracing the processes relating
resources to outcomes is, simply put, the study of influence.
Here, we make a distinction between power understood as resources and
latent capability, and influence, defined as the effective exercise of this power.
Influence is the act of modifying or otherwise having an impact upon another
actor’s preferences or behavior in favor of one’s own aims. Analyzing influence is
vital to understanding China’s impact on international order, for at least two
reasons. First, growing resources and capabilities do not necessarily translate
into the ability to affect others’ behavior. For example, in spite of its position
as the leading holder of U.S. debt, China was unable to exert much meaningful leverage over U.S. financial policy during the recent global financial
crisis.3 In East Asia, despite close economic and political ties, China has had
limited ability to change North Korea’s nuclear policies; nor has it succeeded
in deflecting the territorial claims of some neighbors in the South China Sea.4
Indeed, rising dependency on China actually helped to push the isolated
military regime in Myanmar toward reforms so as to diversify its strategic
ties with other great powers.5 Second, however, it is also inadequate to
conclude from Beijing’s relative reticence in asserting itself in the global arena
that China cannot be any more than a ‘‘partial power,’’ or that it does not
-
International Politics and Observations on China’s Soft Power,’’ Shijie jingji yu zhengzhi [World
economics and politics] 7 (2007).
3. Daniel W. Drezner, ‘‘Bad Debts: Assessing China’s Financial Influence in Great Power
Relations,’’ International Security 34:2 (2009), pp. 7–45.
4. See James Reilly, ‘‘China’s Market Influence in North Korea,’’ in this issue, pp. 894–917.
5. See David I. Steinberg and Hongwei Fan, Modern China-Myanmar Relations: Dilemmas of
Mutual Dependence (Copenhagen: NIAS [Nordic Institute of Asian Studies], 2012).
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GOH / CHINA’S INFLUENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 827
matter.6 If there is significant slippage in how much China manages to
convert its growing resources into observable influence, then the important
research question is why, and—more crucially—whether and how might
China be exercising influence in indirect ways?
This paper investigates China’s influence in Southeast Asia, a neighboring
region in which Beijing has invested considerable economic and diplomatic
resources over the past two decades. Within the sizable literature on China’s
relations with this sub-region, the question of China’s influence has not been
properly addressed.7 In contrast to China’s relations with the major Asian
powers, Sino-Southeast Asian relationships are more asymmetrical, because
many of these states are smaller, less developed, and more dependent upon
China. Thus, we ought to find evidence of China converting its power
resources into influence over these neighbors’ strategic decisions to bring
about outcomes favorable to China. However, the processes and outcomes
of China’s exercise of influence are not straightforward, even in this relatively
straightforward case.
The following analysis is in three parts. The first section defines influence
and outlines a conceptual framework that can account for a range of contexts
from convergent to divergent preferences, in which China exercises its influence. The next section analyzes significant cases demonstrating three innovative categories of Chinese influence in Southeast Asia: ‘‘preference
multiplier,’’ when extant preferences are aligned; ‘‘persuasion,’’ when preexisting preferences are debated; and ‘‘ability to prevail,’’ in instances of opposing preferences. My analysis finds that the first two modes of influence are the
most prevalent, while there are very few instances in which China has managed to make Southeast Asian states do what they would otherwise not have
done. Thus, even though China’s power resources have increased significantly,
the conversion of these resources into control over outcomes is uneven. The
final section discusses the implications for understanding the nature and limits
of Chinese influence.
6. David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013); Gerald S. Segal, ‘‘Does China Matter?’’ Foreign Affairs 78:5 (1999), pp. 24–36.
7. More attention has been paid to the opposite dynamic: Southeast Asia’s putative influence
over China in attempts to ‘‘enmesh’’ or ‘‘socialize’’ it into multilateral norms and institutions. See e.g.,
Evelyn Goh, ‘‘Great Powers and Hierarchical Order: Analyzing Southeast Asian Regional Security
Strategies,’’ International Security 32:3 (Winter 2007/8), pp. 113–57; Alastair Iain Johnston, Social
States: China in International Institutions, 1980–2000 (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press,
2008), ch. 4.
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828 ASIAN SURVEY 54:5
THE INFLUENCE FRAMEWORK
We draw from classical studies of political influence in defining it as the
effective exercise of power. Principally, Max Weber’s classic notion of power
as ‘‘the chance, within a social relationship, to enforce one’s own will against
resistance’’ implies that an actor’s power resources may be converted into
desired outcomes, but not necessarily at all or to their full extent.8 This
notion was elaborated in Cox and Jacobson’s definitive study of influence
as an ‘‘actuality,’’ the actual ‘‘modification of one actor’s behaviour by that of
another’’ for the purpose of achieving the latter’s goals.9 Thus, we make
a distinction here between power as latent capability, and influence as actual
effect on the target actors’ behavior, brought about purposefully and ‘‘in
a direction consistent with . . . the wants, preferences, or intentions of the
influence-wielders.’’10
This focus on influence does not preclude us from recognizing its common
tools, particularly (i) coercion, or action designed to compel another actor to
do something by credibly signalling the costly consequences of his failure to
comply; (ii) inducement, or getting another actor to behave in a particular
way by offering a reward; and (iii) persuasion, by which one actor convinces
another that it is in her best interest to do as he wishes.11 However, these are
tools rather than analytical categories because all three are often used in
combination in real life. Indeed, the literature about China’s rise tries hard
to segregate artificially these tools of power,12 but often without explicitly
analyzing the effectiveness with which China uses these tools, nor examining
seriously how the targets of Chinese influence respond.
Even more problematic is the tendency to look only for evidence of
China getting others to do what they otherwise would not have done. This
stems from a positivist methodological concern: in order to demonstrate
most convincingly an actor’s influence, one needs to start with a situation of
8. Keith Tribe, Reading Weber (Economy and Society) (London: Routledge, 1989). Emphasis
added.
9. Robert W. Cox and Harold R. Jacobson, The Anatomy of Influence: Decision-Making in
International Organization (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973).
10. Robert A. Dahl and Bruce Stinebrickner, Modern Political Analysis, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle
River, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 2003), p. 17.
11. Roderick Martin, The Sociology of Power (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
12. E.g., David Lampton, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2008); Phillip C. Saunders, China’s Global Activism: Strategy, Drivers,
and Tools, Institute for National Strategic Studies, Occasional Paper, no. 4, October 2006.
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GOH / CHINA’S INFLUENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 829
conflict—ideally, one should show that B started out with a different set of
interests and preferences, but upon exposure to A’s coercion, inducement, or
persuasion, made policy choices that he otherwise would not have made.13
But however much methodological satisfaction this may give, such an
approach sets the bar of evidence very high and may be premised upon
outlying incidents rather than recurring observations. Indeed, we face a shortage of such empirical material for contemporary China: a recent major study
concludes that there is not much evidence of China’s ability to cause other
international actors to behave in a manner in which they otherwise would not
have done.14 As the next section argues, this is true too for Southeast Asia. But
does this mean that China has been either hoarding or squandering its
growing power resources? Or have Chinese foreign policy actors been trying
to achieve their strategic aims in other ways, without having to prevail over
the resistance of others?
Rather than looking exclusively for evidence of China prevailing over the
opposition of others, we need to investigate the full range of available evidence for how China achieves its key strategic goals by getting its foreign
constituencies to behave in certain ways. The point is that influence can be
exercised in many instances where there may not be clear resistance and even
when the interests or preferences of the influence-wielder and its targets
converge. This is recognized by critical and post-structuralist studies that
focus on ‘‘insidious’’ power in instances of apparent consent.15 Joseph Nye’s
more accessible notion of ‘‘soft’’ power, stressing how others might be
coopted into wanting what an actor wants through cultural, ideological, and
institutional attraction, is the most popular illustration of such convergent
contexts. But Nye’s focus on ‘‘attraction’’ is unnecessarily narrow: China’s
neighbors may fall in line with its preferences not only because of ideational
attraction, but owing to instrumental calculations, such as the prospect of
access to Chinese economic resources or the lack of other potential large
external supporters.
13. Harold D. Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan, Power and Society: A Framework for Political Inquiry
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950); Robert A. Dahl, ‘‘The Concept of Power,’’ Behavioural Science 2:3 (1957), pp. 201–15.
14. Shambaugh, China Goes Global.
15. See especially Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
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830 ASIAN SURVEY 54:5
In sum, understanding China’s influence requires that we examine (a) the
target actors’ reactions and decisions, and (b) the range of contexts spanning
divergent and convergent preferences. To this end, this paper presents a simple formula that disaggregates modes of Chinese influence depending upon
the degree of alignment between the preexisting preferences of the targets of
influence and China’s. Intuitively, the employment of power resources to
bring about the influence-wielder’s desired goals is most potentially effective
when its prior preferences are pre-aligned with the target’s—and most challenging when they are opposed initially. While this simple hypothesis may be
obvious, the more important contribution we make is, first, in revealing how
the degree of the powerful state’s influence depends upon its targets’ motivations and calculations: weaker actors may conform to the will of the strong
not only because the latter wield greater incentives, sanctions, or legitimacy
but also to further the former’s political or strategic agendas. Second, we also
identify what the key modes of influence are within these contexts of preference convergence and divergence, based on empirical observation.
This framework for understanding contemporary Chinese influence in
Southeast Asia is summarized in Table 1. The ideal context for China to
achieve its desired outcome is when the extant preferences of the other states
are similar to its own. In Southeast Asia, we suggest that Chinese influence in
such convergent contexts has been exercised primarily via a ‘‘multiplier’’ effect
to intensify and mobilize similar preferences and to overcome collective
action problems, for instance, China’s deliberate policies to marshal its growing structural power to promote economic regionalism. Situations in which
others’ extant preferences are undecided present opportunities for China to
influence their perceptions by providing evidence that its own preferences are
more desirable. A key Southeast Asia example is the debate about whether
China is a threat. Here, China’s key mode of influence is persuasion, which
also involves a healthy dose of economic inducement. When faced with
opposed extant preferences, the powerful actor has to invest in a mix of tools
to bring others’ preferences in line with its own. Among the most difficult of
such issues are territorial disputes, but the ability to prevail in these cases
would provide the most dramatic evidence of China’s influence. This range
of cases is not exhaustive, but they are indicative of Sino-Southeast Asian
relations over the past two decades. The other papers in this collection
develop upon these basic modes of Chinese influence and suggest other
modes specific to their case studies.
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Debated/
undecided
Opposed
Persuasion
Ability to
prevail
By author.
Aligned
Preference
multiplier
SOURCE :
Extant
Preferences
Mode of
Influence
To ensure that self-interest and
preferences are protected by altering
other actors’ preferences and behaviour
To tell the better story, to
assure and convince
To exploit structural position for mutual
benefit using policies to generate
deliberate collective outcomes
Aim
table 1. Influence Typologies
Coercion, inducement,
persuasion
Argumentation, inducement,
demonstration
(Structural) intensification,
inducement, persuasion
Tools of Influence
Unpredictable
Mixed
Ideal
Potential for Converting
Resources into Influence
over Outcomes
South China Sea
territorial disputes
Countering the ‘‘China
threat’’ discourse
Economic regionalism
Cases
832 ASIAN SURVEY 54:5
MODES OF CHINA’S INFLUENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
Intuitively, ‘‘easier’’ cases for demonstrating rising China’s influence ought to
be found in smaller and poorer countries on its close periphery such as in
Southeast Asia, where many of China’s 10 smaller neighbors possess relatively
weak military capabilities and/or small populations. China’s rise has had
drastic effects on the region, especially in economic terms. China’s trade with
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) grew dramatically from
US$8 billion in 1980 to $178 billion in 2009 (during which China became
ASEAN’s largest external trading partner) and $280 billion in 2011.16 However, the relationship is imbalanced: ASEAN registers a regular substantive
trade deficit with China, which at its peak increased sixfold between 2000
and 2008.17 ASEAN also invests more in China—up to $52 billion in 2008—
than vice versa: for instance, even though China’s foreign direct investment
(FDI) outflow to ASEAN doubled in 2010–11, this accounted for only 5% of
ASEAN’s total FDI inflows.18 As the world’s preeminent low-cost manufacturer, China also threatens to divert FDI away from ASEAN.19
Politically, Southeast Asia has welcomed China’s reemergence since the
end of the Cold War, accepting the ‘‘one China’’ policy and severing diplomatic ties with Taiwan, while facilitating China’s participation in regional
institutions.20 Militarily, several Southeast Asian states, especially Vietnam
and the Philippines, have directly experienced China’s growing power in
maritime territorial disputes, and some warn that China’s rise is triggering
a regional arms race.21 So, if China’s power has indeed grown, we would
expect to see its impact in altering behavior in these weaker neighbors.
Indeed, some American observers began arguing nearly a decade ago that
16. ASEAN Secretariat, ‘‘ASEAN-China Free Trade Area: Not a Zero-Sum Game,’’ January 7,
2010, at <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-1936004601.html>, accessed July 20, 2013; ASEAN,
ASEAN Community in Figures 2012 (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat, 2013), Table 14.
17. ‘‘ASEAN Jittery about Trade Pact with China,’’ Straits Times (Singapore), February 17, 2010.
18. Ibid.; ASEAN, ASEAN Community in Figures 2012, Table 32. Official data on ASEAN FDI
outflow are not available.
19. On this controversial topic, see Friedrich Wu et al., ‘‘Foreign Direct Investments to China
and ASEAN: Has ASEAN Been Losing Out?’’ Journal of Asian Business 19:1 (2003), pp. 89–105;
C. Busakorn et al., ‘‘The Giant Sucking Sound: Is China Diverting Foreign Direct Investment from
Other Asian Countries?’’ Asian Economic Papers 3:3 (Fall 2005), pp. 122–40.
20. Alice Ba, ‘‘China and ASEAN: Renavigating Relations for a 21st Century Asia,’’ Asian Survey
43:4 (2003), pp. 630–38.
21. E.g., Michael Richardson, Energy and Geopolitics in the South China Sea (Singapore: ISEAS
[Institute of Southeast Asian Studies], 2009).
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GOH / CHINA’S INFLUENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 833
Beijing was ‘‘intent upon establishing a preeminent sphere of influence’’ and
‘‘rapidly becoming the predominant power in Southeast Asia.’’22
China as Preference Multiplier: Economic Regionalism
In assessing the impacts of China’s rise on Southeast Asia, trade and investment figures are only partial manifestations. China’s economic growth has
profoundly changed the structure of the regional political economy by causing most Southeast Asian economies to become significantly reoriented into
a regional production network. Instead of exporting products directly, the
key manufacturing countries now produce components supplied to finalassembly plants in China, from where finished goods are then exported to
international markets. This regional intra-industry trade has significantly
intensified the potential influence that Chinese economic policies have over
Southeast Asian economic health and viability.23
Such structural power is crucial for understanding the impacts of an economy the size of China’s.24 This section shows how Beijing has used the changing
distribution of economic resources, its central position in regional production
networks, and its huge market potential to influence Southeast Asian states’
choices. China can and does use directly the lure of its markets to make others
change their policies.25 However, Beijing more often exerts an indirect type of
deliberate structural influence, moving to consolidate its position as the region’s
economic driver by initiating East Asian economic regionalism.26 In so doing,
22. Marvin Ott, ‘‘China’s Strategic Reach into Southeast Asia,’’ presentation to the U.S.-China
Commission, July 22, 2005; Dana Dillon and John Tkacik, ‘‘China and ASEAN: Endangered
American Primacy in Southeast Asia,’’ Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, no. 1886, October 19, 2005.
23. John Ravenhill, ‘‘Is China an Economic Threat to Southeast Asia?’’ Asian Survey 46:5 (2006),
pp. 653–74; John Wong and Sarah Chan, ‘‘China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement,’’ ibid., 43:3 (2003),
pp. 506–26.
24. On power relationships arising from the relative roles of actors within the same social
structures, see Susan Strange, States and Markets (London: Pinter, 1986); Stephen Krasner, Structural
Conflict: The Third World against Global Liberalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
See John Ciorciari, ‘‘China’s Structural Power Deficit and Influence Gap in the Monetary Policy
Arena,’’ in this issue, pp. 869–93.
25. Shaun Breslin, ‘‘Power and Production: Rethinking China’s Global Economic Role,’’ Review
of International Studies 31:4 (October 2005), pp. 735–53; Steven Gill, ‘‘New Constitutionalism,
Democratisation, and Global Political Economy,’’ Pacific Review 10:1 (1998), pp. 23–38.
26. Christopher Dent, East Asian Regionalism (London: Routledge, 2008); John Ravenhill,
‘‘Understanding the ‘New East Asian Regionalism’,’’ Review of International Political Economy 17:2
(May 2010), pp. 173–77.
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834 ASIAN SURVEY 54:5
China is not using its economic dynamism simply to induce or coerce, but
rather as a catalyst and force multiplier to convert latent shared preferences into
actual regional economic integration.
This type of multiplier influence is made possible by aligned extant preferences about the imperative of economic development. Regional policymakers agree that the most important guarantee of a country’s stability is
sustained economic growth. Nation-building in the underdeveloped and
often ethnically disparate ASEAN states entailed delivering economic growth
to ensure regime legitimacy.27 However, Cold War ideological divisions prevented the Southeast Asian states from pursuing regional economic cooperation, and they subsequently concentrated on the political dimensions of
regionalism after the Cold War. But China, as the rising economic powerhouse, lent weight and momentum to translating the shared developmental
imperative into economic regionalism. In so doing, China exercises influence
via a multiplier effect: its size produces economies of scale, and its political
clout lends significance, even legitimacy, to the enterprise. Beijing does not
need to change others’ preferences but can concentrate on identifying common imperatives, initiating joint policy action, and committing resources to
mobilize cooperative action. Such preference multiplying is a form of influence because it entails enabling others to do something they were not able or
willing to do before, despite convergent preferences. Such influence will be
most effective if it achieves China’s strategic aims, centered on fostering an
external environment conducive to China’s economic development by pacifying Southeast Asia and drawing it into China’s economic orbit. This entails
the prospect of economic gains but also of increasing interdependence and
raising the costs of any regional opposition to China in the future.
Beijing has multiplied its structural power into influence over Southeast
Asian economic regionalism in two key ways: promoting economic development in the least developed parts of the region, and mobilizing the moredeveloped parts toward a trading bloc. First, Beijing has capitalized on the
acute development imperative in the post-communist mainland Southeast
Asian economies by generating regionalism that promises Myanmar, Vietnam,
Cambodia, and Laos long-term economic integration. China’s participation
27. Michael Leifer, ASEAN and the Security of South-East Asia (London: Routledge, 1989);
Muthiah Alagappa, ‘‘Comprehensive Security: Interpretations in ASEAN Countries,’’ in Asian
Security Issues: Regional and Global, ed. by Robert Scalapino et al. (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian
Studies, 1988), pp. 50–78.
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GOH / CHINA’S INFLUENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 835
has made feasible the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) initiative of the
Asian Development Bank, which attracts international investment for infrastructural projects. These connect the poorer states to the markets of China
and Thailand, while improving China’s access to raw material supplies and
ports in the Indian Ocean and East China Sea.28 China is now the top or
second-largest trading partner and investor in Laos and Cambodia, supplying
development assistance and soft loans, including record-breaking multibillion-dollar investments in strategic railways to open new raw material
transport routes into China.29
The second way in which Beijing has acted as a preference multiplier is via
the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA). A prime example of
China’s ability to identify and act upon shared preferences with alacrity, this
Chinese initiative leapfrogged the long-standing deliberations about an intraASEAN FTA. With their competing manufacturing profiles and small industrial and tertiary sectors, ASEAN states in 30 years had not been able to achieve
significant intra-regional trade.30 But China galvanized the economic integration project toward a broader regionalism. China’s growth has driven demand
for Southeast Asian products, especially electrical components, machinery,
plastics, rubber, and oil. ACFTA further allows ASEAN to take advantage of
the rising demand for consumer goods from China’s expanding middle class.31
ACFTA is the world’s largest free trade area, comprising 1.9 billion consumers
and $4.3 trillion in trade. China-ASEAN trade rose from $232 billion in 2010,
when the FTA came into effect, to a reported $400 billion by 2012.32
Yet, China’s multiplier influence does not flow from economic inducement alone: it results from costly political choices made by Southeast Asian
states for which trade liberalization with China has brought significant
28. See Evelyn Goh, Developing the Mekong: Regionalism and Regional Security in China-Southeast
Asian Relations (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2007), Ch. 3.
29. Heng Pheakdey, ‘‘China-Cambodia Relations: A Positive-Sum Game?’’ Journal of Current
Southeast Asian Affairs 31:2 (2012), pp. 57–85; ‘‘China to Invest $9.6 Billion in Cambodia,’’ Phnom
Penh Post (Cambodia), January 1, 2013; ‘‘Laos Says China to Finance Rail Link,’’ Wall Street Journal
(New York), October 24, 2012.
30. Francisco Nadal de Simone, ‘‘A Macroeconomic Perspective of AFTA’s Problems and
Prospects,’’ Contemporary Economic Policy 13:2 (April 1995), pp. 49–62; Vinod Aggarwal and Jonathan
Chow, ‘‘The Perils of Consensus: How ASEAN’s Meta-Regime Undermines Economic and Environmental Cooperation,’’ Review of International Political Economy 17:2 (May 2010), pp. 262–90.
31. ASEAN Secretariat, ‘‘ASEAN-China Free Trade Area.’’
32. ASEAN, ASEAN Community in Figures 2012; ‘‘ASEAN-China Trade Reaches Record High,’’
Brunei Times (Brunei), February 7, 2013.
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836 ASIAN SURVEY 54:5
problems. For instance, parts of the Thai agricultural sector have suffered
from competition with imports of cheap Chinese produce and continuing
Chinese non-tariff barriers. In Indonesia, domestic pressure to protect core
industries caused the government to ask for a delay in implementing ACFTA
regulations.33 In eventually acquiescing to the liberalization agenda, both
Bangkok and Jakarta have made political choices to raise the level of interdependence with China, and to wait for longer-term benefits in spite of the
short-term costs. China too has used ACFTA economic instruments to
pursue political objectives, including assuaging ASEAN fears of China’s economic threat by committing to long-term market access and promising
potential mutual gains.34
ACFTA and GMS regionalism also highlight the ideational element of
preference multiplying: China’s developmental approach reinforces two key
principles that ASEAN holds dear. The first is sovereignty: China’s absolutist
rhetorical stance accords with the sensitivities of these small states, which
appreciate being treated as functional equals by China while receiving preferential treatment in recognition of their relative poverty. Second, the practice of maintaining a capitalist economy without concomitant political
liberalization has been pursued by some regional states such as Singapore
and Thailand.35 While the claim of an alternative ‘‘Beijing consensus’’ is too
far-fetched, developing Southeast Asian states now look to China for lessons
on state intervention in economic practice, particularly after regional disillusionment with international financial institutions post-1997.36
China’s influence as a multiplier of economic growth and regionalism
is not a typical case for demonstrating an exercise of power because Beijing
does not have to get others to do what they do not want to do. However,
preference multiplying has been a vital mode of influence and is crucially
33. ‘‘Thai-Chinese FTA Faces Ongoing Problems,’’ Bangkok Post (Thailand), September 13, 2009;
Alexander Chandra and Lucky Lontoh, ‘‘Indonesia-China Trade Relations: The Deepening of
Economic Integration Amid Uncertainty?’’ Trade Knowledge Network (Geneva: International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2011).
34. John Ravenhill, ‘‘The ‘New East Asian Regionalism’: A Political Domino Effect,’’ Review of
International Political Economy 17:2 (May 2010), pp. 178–208, at p. 200.
35. Denny Roy, ‘‘Singapore, China, and the Soft Authoritarian Challenge,’’ Asian Survey 34:3
(March 1994), pp. 231–42.
36. Jean Grugel, Pia Riggirozzi, and Ben Thirkell-White, ‘‘Beyond the Washington Consensus?
Asia and Latin America in Search of More Autonomous Development,’’ International Affairs 84:3
(2008), pp. 499–517.
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GOH / CHINA’S INFLUENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 837
important in accounting for China’s political successes in Southeast Asia. The
fact that Beijing has enabled its neighbors to translate their disparate economic development imperatives into a tangible regional drive significantly
explains why these states have been receptive to the upsides of China’s
growing power resources, and cautious in responding to its downsides. Yet,
even here, China’s control over outcomes is not always predictable. Rather
than simply intensifying their interdependence with China, Southeast Asian
states have capitalized on the ACFTA momentum to diversify their options
by developing stronger ties with other economic powerhouses, concluding
a spate of bilateral FTAs with Japan, the U.S., South Korea, Australia, and
India.37 Even Laos, the poorest of the Southeast Asian countries, has leveraged on Chinese interest to bargain with other large international donors
such as the World Bank to fund controversial hydropower mega-projects.38
China’s Influence through Persuasion: ‘‘Peaceful Rise’’ vs. ‘‘China Threat’’
Persuasion is about the propagation of dominant beliefs, which, once
accepted, constrain and align the preferences of the target actors with those
of the powerful actor. Such beliefs can be perpetuated through coherent
narratives, argumentation, and behavioral evidence to support these discourses. Over the past two decades, China has expended significant resources
on this aspect of influence in Southeast Asia, especially in image-building
following the prominent international debate in the 1990s about rising
China’s identity. On top of concerns about the rapid growth of its economy
and military, international suspicions of China’s communist regime were
exacerbated by the violent 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, fuelling a widespread
discourse on the ‘‘China threat.’’39 From 1996, an official Chinese campaign
to counter the China threat thesis became apparent.40 Beijing targeted its
37. On this diversification strategy, see Goh, ‘‘Great Powers and Hierarchical Order.’’
38. ‘‘Dams Back in Fashion,’’ The Economist (UK), April 9, 2005; ‘‘NTPC Signs US$1 Billion
Loan Agreements,’’ Nam Theun II Power Company, Ltd., news release (Vientiane, Laos), May 3,
2005.
39. See Denny Roy, ‘‘The ‘China Threat’ Issue: Major Arguments,’’ Asian Survey 36:8 (August
1996), pp. 758–71; Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, The Coming Conflict with China (New
York: Knopf, 1997).
40. The Chinese government stepped up its diplomatic campaign following two high profile
conflicts: the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis, and the armed clashes between China and the Philippines
over the Mischief Reef in the South China Sea in 1995.
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838 ASIAN SURVEY 54:5
international policy of strategic reassurance first at its most pliable periphery,
Southeast Asia, with the aim of persuading the region that China’s rise would
provide opportunities for mutual benefit rather than pose threats to security
or economic interests. This is an ideal case for studying persuasion, as the
extant preferences of the targets were unclear or undecided. The nature of the
‘‘China threat’’ controversy ruled out coercive action on Beijing’s part, making even more salient the tools of persuasion and inducement in shaping
international perceptions.
Beijing’s campaign contained three elements designed to change world
perceptions of China. First was an alternative narrative of China’s benign
resurgence: in promulgating a ‘‘New Security Concept’’ in 1997, President
Jiang Zemin rejected the ‘‘old Cold War security outlook’’ in favor of
privileging mutual trust and benefit, equality, interdependence, cooperative
security, and international norms.41 Chinese officials repeated reassurances
that China would never seek hegemony, was still an underdeveloped country,
and engaged in defensive military spending.42 Since 2003, this carefully deideologized narrative has revolved around the ‘‘peaceful rise’’ concept, subsequently amended to ‘‘peaceful development.’’ The essential aim is strategic
reassurance that China’s resurgence will not threaten others’ interests because
of China’s ‘‘peaceful intentions,’’ limited national capabilities, historically
peaceful outlook, and development trajectory.43 In 2005, President Hu Jintao
added the ‘‘harmonious world’’ concept, stressing plurality in international
relations, specifically respect for ‘‘the right of each country to select its own
social system and path of development.’’44 In the wake of the U.S. ‘‘rebalance’’ to Asia in 2011, President Xi Jinping advocated a ‘‘new model of major
country relations,’’ avowing conflict avoidance and stressing mutual respect
41. PRC, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘‘China’s Position Paper on the New Security Concept,’’
n.d., <http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/ceun/eng/xw/t27742.htm>, accessed July 23, 2013.
42. Yong Deng, ‘‘Reputation and the Security Dilemma: China Reacts to the China Threat
Theory,’’ in New Directions in the Study of China’s Foreign Policy, ed. by Alastair Iain Johnston and
Robert S. Ross (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 186–214.
43. Zheng Bijian, ‘‘China’s ‘Peaceful Rise’ to Great Power Status,’’ Foreign Affairs 84:5 (September/
October 2005), pp. 18–24; PRC, State Council Information Office, ‘‘China’s Peaceful Development
Road,’’ December 12, 2005, <http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/book/152684.htm>, accessed
July 23, 2013.
44. Hu Jintao, ‘‘Striving to Establish a Harmonious World with Lasting Peace and Common
Prosperity,’’ speech at the Summit Meeting on the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations, New
York, September 16, 2005.
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GOH / CHINA’S INFLUENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 839
and win-win cooperation, while emphasizing that ‘‘we have never thought
about pushing the U.S. out of the [Asia-Pacific] region.’’45
Beijing has used policy action to substantiate its claims of being a benign
status quo state, including efforts to negotiate outstanding border disputes;
increasingly adept diplomacy; highly publicized restraint during the Asian
financial crisis; disaster relief; and promises of large investment and aid
packages to East Asian neighbors during the global financial crisis. Furthermore, Beijing has tried to persuade the world that it will not disrupt the existing
international order, by signing onto key international norms of arms control
and disarmament.46 Similarly, Chinese officials worked to gain entry into the
World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, partly to consolidate the notion of
China as a huge economic opportunity.47 Beijing has successfully used ASEAN
forums as a demonstration precinct for its socialization, and Southeast Asia’s
reciprocal responses to Chinese participation and proposals such as ACFTA,
a defense ministers’ dialogue, and a regional bond market have all boosted
China’s claims of peaceful development.48 Leading Chinese scholars have
drawn on China’s participation in ASEAN institutions to develop constructivist theories of socialization with Chinese characteristics, emphasizing ‘‘power
as relationships’’ and the importance of ‘‘process for the sake of process.’’49
Be that as it may, normative persuasion and material inducement are often
co-instruments of influence, and China’s reassurance drive has included
selective easing of barriers to trade and investment, using the promise of access
to the China market to induce policy change. For instance, Beijing used the
prospect of bilateral free trade negotiations to gain formal recognition from
individual countries as a ‘‘market economy,’’ gradually challenging its WTO
status as an ‘‘economy in transition.’’ China has concluded trade agreements
with ASEAN, Pakistan, and New Zealand, and is in negotiation with Australia,
45. Wang Yi, ‘‘Toward a New Model of Major-Country Relations between China and the
United States,’’ speech at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., September 20, 2013,
<http://www.brookings.edu/events/2013/09/20-us-china-foreign-minister-wang-yi>, accessed January 25, 2014.
46. Ann Kent, Beyond Compliance: China, International Organizations, and Global Security
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007).
47. Deng, ‘‘Reputation,’’ p. 201.
48. David Shambaugh, ‘‘China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order,’’ International
Security 29:3 (Winter 2004/5), pp. 64–99; Johnston, Social States, Ch. 4.
49. Qin Yaqing and Wei Ling, ‘‘Structures, Processes, and the Socialization of Power,’’ China’s
Ascent: Power, Security, and the Future of International Politics, ed. by Robert Ross and Zhu Feng
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), pp. 115–38.
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840 ASIAN SURVEY 54:5
India, and South Korea. Its ‘‘Early Harvest Programs’’ with some ASEAN
countries—the partial lifting of trade barriers on selected goods—have been
portrayed as favorable treatment whereby China ‘‘gave more and took less.’’50
Such policies that combine inducement and persuasion amount to a strategy of
‘‘pacification, harmony and enrichment’’ toward neighboring countries.51
Bilateral economic inducement is also a placatory tool that Beijing uses selectively vis-à-vis Southeast Asian states at important junctures, most recently
toward Indonesia and Malaysia in 2013, in the midst of the government shutdown in Washington and renewed tensions with the Philippines over the
South China Sea territorial disputes.52
Yet, the regional reception to China’s persuasion is difficult to measure and
can be ephemeral. Analysts often employ polling data to show positive
changes in public opinion to demonstrate a powerful state’s influence, but
this is problematic.53 A large survey of Asian public opinion in 200854 found,
for example, that while majorities in all surveyed countries saw China’s
influence in regional affairs as very or somewhat positive, strong majorities
were also somewhat or very uncomfortable with the idea of China as leader of
Asia. While pluralities were somewhat worried that China could threaten
them militarily in the future, similar proportions had the same worries about
Japan, and to some extent, the U.S.55 In a region suspicious about its resident
great powers and ambivalent about hegemony, it is difficult to draw significant conclusions from the apparent moderation in public opinion about
China. The bigger challenge is to establish a credible further link between
public opinion and the state elite’s actual policy choices.
50. Yang Jiang, ‘‘China’s Free Trade Agreements and Implications for the WTO,’’ paper presented at ISA [International Studies Association] convention, March 2008, available from <http://
www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/5/0/8/6/pages250869/p250869-1.php>,
accessed July 23, 2013, p. 11.
51. Yuan Peng, ‘‘A Harmonious World and China’s New Diplomacy,’’ Contemporary International Relations 17:3 (2007), pp. 1–26, at p. 9.
52. ‘‘China-RI Companies Agree Partnerships Worth $28.2 Billion,’’ Jakarta Post (Indonesia),
October 4, 2013; ‘‘China Elevates Malaysia Ties, Aims to Triple Trade by 2017,’’ Reuters (London,
UK), October 4, 2013.
53. E.g., those cited in Bates Gill and Yanzhong Huang, ‘‘Sources and Limits of Chinese Soft
Power,’’ Survival 48:2 (2006), pp. 17–36, at pp. 23–25; Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive.
54. I have chosen a 2008 dataset so as not to reflect the spike in regional threat perceptions
following rising tensions in the South China Sea from 2009 onward.
55. Christopher Whitney and David Shambaugh, ‘‘Soft Power in Asia: Results of a 2008 Multinational Survey of Public Opinion,’’ Asia Soft Power Survey 2008, Chicago Council on Global
Affairs and East Asia Institute.
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GOH / CHINA’S INFLUENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 841
Over the past two decades, Beijing’s efforts at discursive persuasion,
backed by policy action and inducements, have arguably held at bay the tide
of ‘‘China threat’’ sentiments in Southeast Asia. The upswell of Chinese
peaceful cooperation and win-win rhetoric, reciprocal responses to China’s
regional initiatives, and burgeoning bilateral ties all indicate that policymakers in Southeast Asian states have received the message. They have
proved broadly willing to give China some benefit of the doubt, and act
accordingly.56 But China’s persuasive influence is still limited in that Beijing
has not fully achieved its aim of strategic assurance or pacification. As highlighted in the next section, many Southeast Asian states are not rolling over
into a Sinocentric sphere of influence: many continue to ‘‘hedge’’ by diversifying their economic and strategic relationships with other great powers,
and some remain willing to resist when they perceive Chinese threats to their
core national interests. Ultimately, Southeast Asian receptiveness to Chinese
reassurance arises from the twin belief in the possibility of socializing China
into a status quo power, and of growing interdependence leading to prosperity and peace. Hence, China’s capacity to persuade is conditional upon its
ability to continue offering economic inducement and to sustain benign
policy action. China’s neighbors are watching in particular how Beijing tries
to prevail in more serious conflicts of interest.
China’s Ability to Prevail: Territorial Conflicts
The most common way of gauging influence is to try to find a significant
issue where the parties’ extant preferences are opposed, but the target actor
changes its behavior at some cost as a result of the powerful actor’s actions.
Positivist scholars search for such ‘‘hard’’ cases to prove causality, but the
study of influence focuses on the efficacy of a state’s efforts to prevail over
others with divergent preferences, not just on showing that the former has
attempted to prevail. Again, the outcome depends on the targets’ motivations,
making even more important close analyses of their decision-making processes. In the case of China and Southeast Asia, the most significant strategic
issues in which to look for evidence of Chinese influence include defense
relations with the U.S., support for regional security ties that exclude the
56. Shambaugh, ‘‘China Engages Asia’’; Evelyn Goh, ‘‘Southeast Asian Perspectives on the China
Challenge,’’ Journal of Strategic Studies 30:4 (August 2007), pp. 809–32.
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842 ASIAN SURVEY 54:5
U.S., and policies on territorial disputes. On these potential hard cases, it is
difficult to find significant changes in Southeast Asian states’ policies to date.
Almost all Southeast Asian states continue to support and facilitate the U.S.
military presence in the region and wider American strategic objectives,
rhetorically and through defense engagement.
One potential case of China prevailing in a conflict of interest may be
found in the decision of the Philippines to alter its stance on its claims to the
Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, which are disputed by the Philippines, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei. Following the 1995
discovery of Chinese military structures on Mischief Reef, claimed by the
Philippines, Manila led a unified ASEAN effort to engage Beijing in multilateral negotiations. By a Declaration of Conduct signed in 2002, the parties
agreed to exercise restraint and seek peaceful resolution of conflicts.57 In
September 2004, however, Manila changed its multilateral stance and confidentially signed an agreement with Beijing for a joint survey of potential
exploitable oil and gas resources around the Spratlys. That this was a politically controversial move for Manila is indicated by the withholding of details
until 2008.58 For critics, the bilateral agreement undermined ASEAN’s collective approach and the Declaration of Conduct, which obliges all parties to
agree in any resource cooperation.59 China’s aims in promoting joint development were to persuade the Philippines to shelve the territorial dispute, to
adopt bilateral mechanisms, and to avoid internationalizing the issue to
involve non-claimants and other external parties.60
How and to what extent did China prevail over Manila to alter its previous
preferences? Conceptually, Beijing presented ‘‘joint development’’ as a credible alternative to confrontation or a multilateral code of conduct.61 Joint
57. Leszek Buszynski, ‘‘ASEAN, the Declaration on Conduct, and the South China Sea,’’ Contemporary Southeast Asia 25:3 (2003), pp. 434–63; Wu Shicun and Ren Huaifeng, ‘‘More Than
a Declaration: A Commentary on the Background and Significance of the Declaration on the Conduct
of Parties in the South China Sea,’’ Chinese Journal of International Law 2:1 (2003), pp. 311–20.
58. It later transpired that Vietnam had joined the now tripartite agreement in March 2005. Little is
known about Hanoi’s decision, but the agreement did not cover maritime territory claimed by Vietnam.
59. See Mark Valencia, ‘‘The Philippines’ Spratly ‘Bungle’: Blessing in Disguise?’’ Nautilus Institute
Policy Forum Online 08-022A, March 18, 2008, <http://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-policy-forum/
the-philippines-spratly-bungle-blessing-in-disguise/#axzz2ZrKNC2J1>, accessed July 23, 2013.
60. Ralf Emmers, ‘‘China’s Influence in the South China Sea and the Failure of Joint Development,’’ mimeo, November 2013.
61. Idem, Resource Management and Contested Territories in East Asia (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2013).
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GOH / CHINA’S INFLUENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 843
development would be conducted bilaterally by national oil companies, thus
circumventing the ASEAN state-based negotiations. Critics charged that
joint development Chinese-style was a convenient means for Beijing to claim
territory over which it is widely perceived to have little plausible legal claim.62
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo appeared to have been persuaded by key
Philippine establishment figures involved in informal patronage networks
involving both the oil industry and the Chinese business sector, against the
opposition of Foreign Ministry and Justice Ministry officials.63
Economic inducements appeared to be key to Beijing’s success. The agreement was part of a package of bilateral agreements signed by Arroyo and Hu
in 2004–06, including $1.6 billion from China in loans and investments, plus
military assistance worth more than $1 million.64 Amid speculation that the
Spratlys agreement was a quid pro quo for these commercial agreements,
when the scandal broke in 2008, members of the Philippines House of
Representatives demanded investigations into the connection. Alongside this
were inducements offered by the ACFTA: Manila, which had initially
opposed the FTA agreement, accepted the Early Harvest Program in early
2005. Bilateral trade grew from $1.77 billion in 2001 to $8.29 billion in 2008;
by 2006 China was the fifth largest provider of official development assistance
(ODA) to the Philippines, supporting a number of high-profile large infrastructural projects.65
Finally, coercion was evident in China’s management of the Spratlys
dispute. Since 2007, regional observers had noted ‘‘a clearer Chinese assertiveness in advancing its territorial claims.’’66 Chinese patrol boats fired on
Vietnamese fishing vessels, and China conducted a large naval exercise near
the disputed Paracel Islands. A British Petroleum-led consortium that held
62. Barry Wain, ‘‘Manila’s Bungle in the South China Sea,’’ Far Eastern Economic Review,
January/February 2008.
63. See Aileen Baviera, ‘‘The Influence of Domestic Politics on Philippine Foreign Policy: The
Case of Philippines-China Relations since 2004,’’ RSIS [S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies] Working Paper 241, June 5, 2012.
64. Luz Baguioro, ‘‘Beijing Offers Manila $2.6bn in Funds,’’ Straits Times, April 28, 2005;
‘‘Philippines Warms to China with Care,’’ ibid., June 7, 2006.
65. Ian Storey, ‘‘Conflict in the South China Sea: China’s Relations with Vietnam and the
Philippines,’’ Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, April 30, 2008, <http://www.japanfocus.org/-IanStorey/2734>, accessed July 23, 2013.
66. Ralf Emmers, ‘‘The Changing Distribution of Power in the South China Sea: Implications
for Conflict Management and Avoidance,’’ Political Science 62:2 (December 2010), pp. 118–31, at
p. 128.
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844 ASIAN SURVEY 54:5
a concession for developing gas fields off the Vietnamese coast suspended
operations after two months, reportedly as a result of Chinese threats to
exclude BP from future energy deals in China.67 While none of these actions
involved the Philippines, China’s tough stance against Vietnam sent a strong
signal to the militarily and economically weaker Filipinos. Beijing further
asserted sovereignty by upgrading the status of the administrative center
overseeing its claimed South China Sea territories.
And yet, Manila’s apparent reversal on joint development was short-lived
and did not demonstrate China’s ability to prevail. The domestic political
scandal caused the Arroyo government to walk away from the agreement
in 2008, and Manila toughened its stance on the territorial conflict thereafter.
In 2009, the Philippine Senate enacted a law that included the Spratlys
within the country’s maritime baselines. The Philippines, together with
Vietnam, included the disputed islands in their formal submissions to the
U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.68 Incidents of
coercion have increased: when the U.S. Navy’s ocean surveillance ship Impeccable allegedly intruded into China’s exclusive economic zone in March
2009, Beijing despatched naval vessels to confront it. The U.S. sent a guided
missile destroyer into the region.69 Other claimants have subsequently upgraded their military facilities and capabilities in the area.70
While Chinese behavior has certainly had an impact on the other claimant
states, the latter have not made choices in the direction that China wants.
Chinese influence has been limited insofar as Beijing has failed to persuade,
induce, or coerce its rivals into changing their approaches to the dispute. As
a reflection of this, Beijing too has adopted a harder line on these disputes
since 2009, fueling a classic security dilemma. It objected to multilateral
discussions of the issue within ASEAN, and Chinese vessels were embroiled
in a number of tense stand-offs with Philippine and Vietnamese craft in the
disputed areas in 2011, 2012, and 2014. Hanoi chose to ‘‘internationalize’’ the
conflict by bringing it up for open discussion in wider Asia-Pacific forums,
67. Storey, ‘‘Conflict.’’
68. Ian Storey, ‘‘China-Vietnam’s Year of Friendship Turns Fractious,’’ Straits Times, May 26,
2009; Rodolfo Severino, ‘‘Clarifying the New Philippine Baselines Law,’’ in Energy and Geopolitics in
the South China Sea, ASEAN Studies Centre Report 8 (Singapore: ISEAS, 2009), pp. 74–77.
69. ‘‘Philippines to Seek Help of Allies in Spratlys Case,’’ Philippine Daily Inquirer, March 17,
2009.
70. Emmers, ‘‘Changing Power’’; Ian Storey, ‘‘China’s ‘Charm Offensive’ Loses Momentum in
Southeast Asia,’’ China Brief 10:9 (April 2010), pp. 7–10.
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GOH / CHINA’S INFLUENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 845
while Manila submitted the dispute for arbitration at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in January 2013.71 The Philippines and Vietnam
also encouraged a greater role for the U.S. in managing the conflict, facilitating increased U.S. rhetorical interventions, support for regional allies, and
a ‘‘rebalancing’’ of U.S. naval forces into the region in 2012.72 All these were
unintended consequences for China that derived from its inability to prevail
over its Southeast Asian rival claimants; indeed, its unsuccessful attempts to
influence them brought about precisely the outcomes that it was aiming to
avoid.
Yet, the South China Sea wrangling is the only ‘‘hard’’ case that China has
tested so far in trying to get Southeast Asian states to change their behavior in
instances of conflicting extant preferences. Theoretically, other such cases
would involve strategically important states altering key policies, such as
Vietnam relinquishing its other maritime territorial claims, or the Philippines
or Singapore significantly downgrading their security relationships with the
U.S. Beijing has chosen not to push its neighbors on these most challenging
issues. It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore why, but realists
probably have a ‘‘good enough’’ explanation based on China’s still limited
military capacity, particularly if we look beyond bilateral balances of power.
The U.S. alliance with the Philippines, Washington’s military pivot, and its
expressed interest in open sea lines of communication are reminders to
Beijing that if it chooses to wield coercive military power in the South China
Sea, its capabilities relative to those of the U.S. will determine whether it can
prevail.
EVALUATING CHINA’S INFLUENCE
This article began by asking how and to what extent China has managed to
convert its growing capabilities into influence over outcomes. We established
that influence can be exercised across a range of contexts, from divergent to
convergent pre-existing preferences. Since influence is relational, China’s
71. Michael Swaine and Taylor Fravel, ‘‘China’s Assertive Behaviour Part Two: The Maritime
Periphery,’’ China Leadership Monitor, no. 35 (2012); Donald Emmerson, ‘‘ASEAN Stumbles in
Phnom Penh,’’ Asia Times, July 17, 2012; ‘‘Panel to Hear PH Case v China Now Complete,’’
Philippine Daily Enquirer, June 26, 2013.
72. Carlyle Thayer, ‘‘The Tyranny of Geography: Vietnamese Strategies to Constrain China in
the South China Sea,’’ Contemporary Southeast Asia 33:3 (2012), pp. 348–69; Hillary Rodham Clinton,
‘‘America’s Pacific Century,’’ Foreign Policy 189 (2011), pp. 56–63.
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846 ASIAN SURVEY 54:5
effective influence also crucially depends upon how other states react. Focusing on the apparently positive story of Sino-Southeast Asian relations, we
analyzed China’s influence as a preference multiplier, a persuader, and by its
ability to prevail. This study found that China does not thus far have a significant record of managing to get its smaller Southeast Asian neighbors to do
what they would not otherwise have done. Instead, Beijing has successfully
harnessed the most notable elements of its growing power—its economic
strength and integration into the world economy—by distributing and multiplying the positive effects in economic regionalism initiatives. China has
also devoted significant energy to persuasion in the vital debate about the
nature of its growing power. Yet, in order to persuade its neighbors to choose
one set of beliefs over another, accompanying economic inducement and
concrete policy action are essential. In the case of significant territorial conflict, China has not only failed to cause other states to change their behavior
but has actually spurred the internationalization, multilateralization, and
focus on regional codes and international law that it has tried to steer rival
claimants away from.
It may be tempting to conclude that China is not influential because it has
not been able to get even its relatively weak Southeast Asian neighbors to do
what they otherwise would not have done. But these instances of China
trying to prevail over its neighbors’ divergent interests are outliers in Southeast Asian experience. Indeed, the above analysis highlights more complex
issues about the nature of China’s influence. China’s overall strategic goals in
Southeast Asia have been to pacify and assure the region, in order to achieve
stability in the periphery for China’s economic development in the short
term, and to create interdependence and goodwill to forestall resistance to
China’s leadership and strategies in the long run. Assessed against these goals,
the cup of Chinese influence is half-empty, but also half-full.
First, from the point of view of the Southeast Asians, the bulk of China’s
attempts at influence have been concentrated in the preference multiplying
and persuasive realms. With the exception of the Philippines and Vietnam,
even the other rival claimants in the South China Sea disputes tend to share
China’s preference to defer these sovereignty questions and to avoid armed
conflict. Against this background, China seems to reap significant results from
what it sows, even when, for instance, the economic inducements it offers are
clearly accompanied by potentially damaging economic competition. Part of
the reason lies in expectations: these neighbors, harboring trepidations about
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GOH / CHINA’S INFLUENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 847
Chinese intentions, have had low expectations vis-à-vis China compared to the
other major powers. It is also in these nations’ interest to emphasize Chinese
involvement in their security and political economies, to play the ‘‘China card’’
and put pressure on other partners such as the U.S.73
Second, as already discussed, China has so far not made many difficult
demands of these smaller states. Their lack of strategic importance can only
be a small part of the explanation, given maritime Southeast Asia’s strategic
location and the quality of Chinese political attention paid to the region to
date. The other way to think about it is that China exerts influence there to
the extent that it has been able largely to circumvent serious conflicts of
interest. It has managed this by concentrating on the issue areas where its
extant preferences and those of its neighbors align, and by emphasizing tools
of persuasion and inducement.
This focus on putting aside or preempting conflict in fact accords with
liberal scholars’ accounts of China’s strategy to ‘‘shape neighboring areas’’
(suzao zhoubian) so as to avoid isolation. Beijing uses strong reassurance
mechanisms and economic ties to persuade others that ‘‘Cold War-style
containment of China simply could not occur in this era of interdependence.’’74 It thus uses the region as a ‘‘shield from pressure exerted by other
great powers.’’75 Instead of focusing on constraining U.S. power directly,
China wants to reshape the incentive structure and perceptions of its neighbors so that they would not agree to become complicit in any attempt by the
U.S. to constrain China.
Finally, though, this systemic, geopolitical dimension of Chinese influence
in Southeast Asia acts as a significant brake on how much China can transform its power resources into the kind of longer-term preference-changing
influence it desires. Because Southeast Asian states themselves leverage on
Chinese power and putative influence to intensify U.S. and other great power
involvement in the region, this in turn offers incentives for China to work less
on trying to change others’ deep-seated preferences or ideology than on
hitching an opportunistic ride on their dissatisfactions and fears. Therefore,
73. See Goh, ‘‘Great Powers,’’ pp. 136–38.
74. Rosemary Foot, ‘‘Chinese Strategies in a U.S. Hegemonic Global Order: Accommodating
and Hedging,’’ International Affairs 82:1 (2006), pp. 77–94, at p. 88.
75. Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping, ‘‘China’s Regional Strategy,’’ in Power Shift: China and
Asia’s New Dynamics, ed. by David Shambaugh (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 48–70,
at pp. 50–51.
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848 ASIAN SURVEY 54:5
it is not easy to find good cases of Beijing trying to alter regional preferences
about a significant, large strategic issue. But this combination of factors also
explains Southeast Asian skittishness in recent years, as the apparent reassurance gained from a decade of Chinese persuasion and inducement has slipped
away quickly in the face of more assertive behavior from Beijing.
Ultimately, the path to understanding Chinese influence lies in empirical
excavation before theoretical conjecture. We need to assemble significant
cases and detailed empirical analyses that trace China’s attempts to influence
other states, rather than simply drawing correlations between its capabilities
and outcomes. It is of course extremely difficult to excavate clearly the causal
links between China’s actions and the policies adopted by other states without intimate access to policy-makers’ convictions and decision-making processes, but studies that can contribute meaningful process-tracing will be
invaluable. As this article has shown, China’s record of influence is complex
even with the smaller states in Southeast Asia where power asymmetries are
significant.
The other articles in this partial special issue of Asian Survey explore in
greater detail China’s influence over these and other developing Asian countries in specific issue areas. Together, they reinforce my finding that China
demands less from its developing neighbors than we might expect: there
are not many cases in which Beijing tries to make these countries do what
they otherwise would not have done. Rather, China’s influence takes less
adversarial, more indirect forms, either without requiring these states to
change their preferences or causing them to preempt Chinese demands.
Second, these developing states exploit Chinese interests and stand up to
China more than we might expect. As a result, the degree to which China is
able to influence its developing neighbors is strongly mediated by both wider
strategic competition and these states’ domestic politics. Third, China’s
record of influence is mixed, and often unsuccessful, in persuading, inducing,
or coercing developing Asian states to do what they do not want to do.
Finally, these papers suggest that Chinese notions and practices—as well as
our mainstream theoretical conceptualizations—of influence require further
development and refinement.
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