Page 44 - AEI Insights 2018 Vol 4 Issue 1

AEI Insights, Vol 4, Issue 1, 2018

sense, China is also interested to setup military and commercial facilities along its sea lines of
communication from West Asia to China passes through several choke points such as Malaccan
Strait and Lombok Strait, known as the "String of Pearls" (Lam 2015:118). The string of Pearls
is an act of containment against any military attempt by the United States and its alliance in the
region. It is in parallel to the recent development that includes China's modernisation of military
forces, the formation of artificial islands and increase of ports and airfields access.

Next, scholars also relate the Beijing's fundamental interests in the SCS with historical power
projection. China's power projection come from the notion of ‘Son of Heaven' mandate and the
sense of self that sees itself as a victim of the international system due to the deep historical
injury of One Hundred Years of National Humiliation as a result of foreign powers occupation.
In this context, the Chinese leadership perceives South China Sea as a significant place where
it can expansively project the idea of a Great, modern China, making the SCS a matter of
national identity and regime security. It is also why part of China's goal in SCS is to project
People's Liberation Army Navy as true blue water navy to keep the United States out of the
Asia Pacific by dominating the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean (Koda 2017:4).

The extent of principled-pragmatism towards ASEAN –China relations can be seen in the way
ASEAN has been dealing with China in South China Sea by using the Code of Conduct and
the fact that China is taking the outcome of the framework seriously as its behaviour might be
affected. In this sense, ASEAN is also using the advantage of the member-states’ bilateral ties
with other external powers in the political-security, economic or sociocultural aspects, which
make it “hard for one great power to manipulate the Association unilaterally, given the gridlock
of power” in the region (Emmers 2014:61). The idea is that despite the great power competition
in SCS, the players are all linked through mutually beneficial relationships. Therefore it is
principled pragmatic for ASEAN to address the issue regionally as it can minimise the pressure
of Great Power and making conflict seems undesirable.

Another way ASEAN is being principled pragmatic when dealing with China is by utilising
the international law to manage the maritime resource rights. Although UNCLOS cannot
forcefully impose its legal verdict to the ratified countries, it is highly necessary for the claimant
states in the region to justify its claim using its jurisdiction. It is because UNCLOS provides
transparency regarding the conflicting claims between the claimants, which is vital to prevent
a self-determined position by any of the claimants to "might makes right". In this sense,
UNCLOS helps to legitimise the actions of ASEAN claimants like Vietnam and the Philippines
to criticise China's brutal development in SCS via range of platforms.

Conclusion

This article has examined the central assumptions concerning ASEAN principled-pragmatism
and the evolving role of ASEAN normative security strategy underlying the concepts of
ASEAN Way, neutrality, multilateralism and centrality in response to the South China Sea
dispute. It has discovered that the concept of principled-pragmatism helped to explain the
country’s foreign policies following their variegated expectations of ‘low cost-high benefit',
‘low cost-low benefit' or ‘high cost-low benefit' relating to the international law, threat
perception, economic dependency and the level of regional resilience.

The article helps to explain that despite the common criticism that ASEAN countries only put
emphasis on the individual interests over regional unity in the South China Sea dispute, it is
veritably an act of principled-pragmatism that calculates the weight of both normative and

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