Page 43 - AEI Insights 2018 Vol 4 Issue 1

Azman and Kumar, 2018

The countries that might fit in this description is Vietnam and the Philippines. What makes this
group different from the previous two groups is that they have several direct encounters with
China's naval force in the disputed area, they have the large overlapping claims with Beijing
and the strong anti-China sentiments in their countries. They also signed a trilateral Joint
Maritime Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) agreement in 2005 but failed due to the issue of
sovereignty. These personal experiences hence shaped their current strategic foreign policy
approach towards SCS. It should be noted that the article considers the Philippines fit in this
group because of its long history of being assertive in SCS through ASEAN–multilateral
platforms, the tribunal ruling and active engagement with the United States. Currently, it might
temporarily halt its posture following the ‘low cost-high benefit' expectation due to the ASEAN
chairmanship and Duterte’s hectic domestic priority.

Firstly, the Socialist country is known for its direct and indirect engagement with China and
fellow ASEAN members to seek for best political settlement to solve the dispute. In this
context, Vietnam established direct engagement with China through high-level visits and
cooperative measures relating to maritime issues such as hot line, fishery and preventative
mechanism in the sea. But at the same time, Vietnam pushes indirect engagement with other
ASEAN countries to engage China in an ASEAN-based multilateral framework.

What is principled-pragmatic about this approach is that Vietnam uses both engagements on a
complimentary basis to consolidate the opinions of various interest groups within China as well
as the perspectives of the claimant and non-claimant ASEAN member-state relating to the
contested water, for Vietnam to comprehensively assess the situation in SCS. Vietnam also
practices soft balancing by engaging with the great powers through active military
procurements from Russia, the United States and India (Amer 2014:33). It adopts hard
balancing by expanding its defence capacity and improving law enforcement capability. While
these approaches might induce the tendency to execute direct military confrontation under a
tense situation, Vietnam has been cautious by justifying that the established relationship with
external power as just formal diplomatic relations and the modernization of armed force to
protect its long coast and large maritime zone. The idea of principled-pragmatism here is that
Hanoi being logical to protect its sovereignty, considering its experiences of being threatened
by China and how it often got ignored by other ASEAN member states for political support.

The extent of principled-pragmatism in ASEAN-China relations

There are some core assumptions discerning China's primary objectives in SCS. It is firstly
important to acknowledge that China positions the South China Sea as a ‘core interest' on its
national agenda, meaning that it is considered as "non-negotiable" and on par with Taiwan and
Tibet. Some scholars also assert that Beijing wishes to gain control of the SCS is due to the
strategic shipping lanes and energy security (Andrews-Speed 2014:24-28). The reason is that
accessible trading and fossil fuels are considered as the lifeblood of China's gigantic economy.
There is an insatiable thirst for these non-renewable resources grows even more in the current
years, by looking at how Beijing's economic policies mostly consist of Renminbi being thrown
over the lands, the skies and the oceans across many nations where it is possible to reach.

The core examples are the "One Road One Belt" (OBOR) initiative and the Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The implication is particularly significant in
the SEA region, where the countries are highly in need of high-level infrastructures and foreign
capital. It is one of the hefty ways that Beijing has kept all 10-member countries from merging
against it despite the explicit danger of China's maritime assertiveness in SCS. In a much deeper

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