The essence of hedging: Malaysia and singapore’s response to a rising china

Contemporary Southeast Asia

Volumn 30, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 159-185

  Cheng Chwee, Kuik ^a  

^a UNIVERSITI KEBANGSAAN MALAYSIA   (Malaysia)

Author keywords

Balancing bandwagoning; Hedging; Regime legitimation; Small state behaviour; Southeast Asia China relations

Indexed keywords

EID: 85120739954     PISSN: 0129797X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1355/cs30-2a     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. A shorter version of this essay originally appeared in BiblioAsia 3, no. 4 (January 2008), pp. 4–13. The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Fulbright Program, the UKM Study Leave Scheme, the SAIS Doctoral Fellowship, the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship (National Library Board, Singapore), and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. He would also like to express his appreciation to Karl Jackson, David Lampton, Francis Fukuyama, Bridget Welsh, Wang Gungwu, Zakaria Haji Ahmad, Hari Singh, Ian Storey, Kong Bo, Goh Muipong, Jessica Gonzalez, Jim and Joanie Allison, Laura Deitz, John Copper, Yong Pow Ang and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the earlier drafts of the paper.
2. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
3. Stephen Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power”, International Security 9, no. 4 (Spring 1985): 3–43.
4. Randall Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In”, International Security 19, no. 1 (Summer 1994): 72–107.
5. Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert Ross, eds., Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (New York: Routledge, 1999); David Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical Frameworks”, International Security 27, no. 4 (Spring 2003): 57–85; Amitav Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?”, International Security 28, no. 3 (Winter 2003–04): 149–64.
6. Amitav Acharya, “Containment, Engagement, or Counter-Dominance? Malaysia’s Response to the Rise of China”, in Johnston and Ross, Engaging China, op. cit., p. 140.
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8. Amitav Acharya has rightly cautioned that engagement cannot be viewed as bandwagoning “because it does not involve abandoning the military option vis-à-vis China”. He also stresses that economic self-interest should not be confused with bandwagoning because economic ties “do not amount to deference”. See Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?”, op. cit., 151–52.
9. Johnston and Ross, Engaging China, op. cit., p. 288; Chien-Peng Chung, “Southeast Asia-China Relations: Dialectics of ‘Hedging’ and ‘Counter-Hedging’”, Daljit Singh and Chin Kin Wah, eds., Southeast Asian Affairs 2004 (Singapore: ISEAS, 2004), pp. 35–53; Evelyn Goh, Meeting the China Challenge, Policy Studies 16 (Washington, D.C.: East West Center Washington, 2005); Francis Fukuyama and John Ikenberry, Report of the Working Group on Grand Strategic Choices, The Princeton Project on National Security (September 2005), pp. 14–25; Bronson Percival, The Dragon Looks South (Westport, CT & London: Praeger Security International, 2007).
10. On inner justification of the “right to govern”, see Max Weber, “Legitimacy, Politics, and the State”, in William Connolly, ed., Legitimacy and the State (New York: New York University Press, 1984), pp. 32–62; David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (London: MacMillan, 1991); Muthiah Alagappa, ed., Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).
11. On neo-realism, see Waltz, Theory of International Politics, op. cit.; Robert Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
12. This definition is adapted from Glenn Munn et al., Encyclopedia of Banking and Finance, 9th edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991), p. 485; Jonathan Pollack, “Designing a New American Security Strategy for Asia”, in James Shinn, ed., Weaving the Net: Conditional Engagement with China (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996), pp. 99–132; Goh, Meeting the China Challenge, op. cit., pp. 2–4.
13. On ASEAN’s discourse of “uncertainty”, see Yuen Foong Khong, “Coping with Strategic Uncertainty: The Role of Institutions and Soft Balancing in Southeast Asia’s Post-Cold War Strategy”, in J.J. Suh, Peter Katzenstein, and Allen Carlson, eds., Rethinking Security in East Asia (Stanford: Stanford University, 2004).
14. Michael Leifer, The ASEAN Regional Forum: Extending ASEAN’s Model of Regional Security, Adelphi Paper no. 302 (London: Oxford University Press for IISS, 1996); Khong, “Coping with Strategic Uncertainties”, op. cit.
15. The need to go beyond the dichotomous terms was emphasized earlier by Amitav Acharya and Ja Ian Chong. See Acharya, “Containment, Engagement, or Counter-Dominance?”, op. cit.; Chong, Revisiting Responses to Power Preponderance, Working Paper no. 54 (Singapore: Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, 2003).
16. Stephen Leong, “Malaysia and the People’s Republic of China in the 1980s: Political Vigilance and Economic Pragmatism”, Asian Survey 27, no. 10 (October 1987): 1109–26.
17. Chia Siow-Yue, “China’s Economic Relations with ASEAN Countries”, and Chin Kin Wah, “A New Phase in Singapore’s Relations with China”, both in Joyce Kallgren et al. eds., ASEAN and China: An Evolving Relationship (Berkeley: University of California, 1988), pp. 189–214 and pp. 274–91 respectively.
18. John Wong, The Political Economy of China’s Changing Relations with Southeast Asia (London: Macmillan, 1984).
19. Adapted from Schweller, “Managing the Rise of Great Powers”; Yuen Foong Khong, “Singapore: A Time for Economic and Political Engagement”, both in Johnston and Ross, Engaging China, op. cit., pp. 13–15 and pp. 110–13, respectively.
20. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit”, op. cit.
21. Anthony Smith, “Thailand’s Security and the Sino-Thai Relationship”, China Brief 5, Issue 3 (2005), p. 3.
22. Michael Leifer, “Indonesia’s Encounters with China and the Dilemmas of Engagement”, in Johnston and Ross, Engaging China, op. cit., p. 99.
23. This term is adapted from “counter-dominance”, as coined by Amitav Acharya, “Containment, Engagement, or Counter-Dominance?”, op. cit., pp. 129–51.
24. Ralf Emmers, Cooperative Security and the Balance of Power in ASEAN and the ARF (London & New York: Routledge, 2003).
25. “Soft balancing” is used as a contrast to “hard balancing”, which refers to formal and strict sense of military alliance. See Khong, “Coping with Strategic Uncertainties”, op. cit.
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27. Wang Gungwu, “China and the Region in Relation to Chinese Minorities”, Contemporary Southeast Asia 1, no. 1 (May 1979): 36–50; Leong, “Malaysia and the People’s Republic”, op. cit., pp. 1109–26; and J.N. Mak, “The Chinese Navy and the South China Sea: A Malaysian Assessment”, Pacific Review 4, no. 2 (1991): 150–61.
28. Joseph Liow Chinyong, “Malaysia-China Relations in the 1990s: The Maturing of a Partnership”, Asian Survey 40, no. 4 (July/August 2000): 672–91.
29. Malaysia Trade and Industry Portal, Trade and Investments Statistics, available at .
30. Mohamad Sadik Gany, Malaysia’s China Policy, M.A. unpublished paper (Bangi & Kuala Lumpur: UKM-IDFR, 2001).
31. Kuik Cheng-Chwee, “Multilateralism in China’s ASEAN Policy”, Contemporary Southeast Asia 27, no. 1 (April 2005): 102–22; “China’s Evolving Multilateralism in Asia: The Aussenpolitik and Innenpolitik Explanations”, in Kent E. Calder and Francis Fukuyama, eds., East Asian Multilateralism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), pp. 109–42.
32. Lee Lai To, China and the South China Sea Dialogues (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999).
33. Liow, “Malaysia-China Relations”, op. cit., p. 687.
34. Joint Statement between the Government of Malaysia and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on Framework for Future Bilateral Cooperation, 31 May 1999.
35. Baginda, “Malaysian Perceptions of China”, in Yee and Storey, The China Threat, op. cit., p. 244.
36. Liow, “Malaysia-China Relations”, op. cit., pp. 688–89.
37. Liow, “Malaysia-China Relations”, op. cit., pp. 679–80.
38. Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Prime Minister of Malaysia, keynote address to the China-Malaysia Economic Conference, Sunway, 24 February 2004.
39. Liow, “Malaysia-China Relations”, op. cit., pp. 682–83.
40. Zakaria Haji Ahmad, “Malaysia”, in Evelyn Goh, ed., Betwixt and Between: Southeast Asian Strategic Relations with the U.S. and China, IDSS Monograph no. 7 (Singapore: IDSS, 2005), pp. 58–59.
41. “I Am Still Here: Asiaweek’s Complete Interview with Mahathir Mohamad”, Asiaweek, 9 May 1997.
42. Mohd Najib Tun Abd Razak, Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, “Strategic Outlook for East Asia: A Malaysian Perspective”, keynote address to the Malaysia and East Asia International Conference, Kuala Lumpur, 9 March 2006.
43. Khong, “Singapore”, op. cit., pp. 109–28.
44. Allen Whiting, “ASEAN Eyes China: The Security Dimension”, Asian Survey 37, no. 4 (April 1997).
45. Evelyn Goh, “Singapore’s Reaction to a Rising China: Deep Engagement and Strategic Adjustment”, in Ho Khai Leong and Samuel C.Y. Ku, eds., China and Southeast Asia: Global Changes and Regional Challenges (Singapore and Kaohsiung: ISEAS and CSEAS, 2005), p. 313.
46. Michael Leifer, Singapore’s Foreign Policy: Coping with Vulnerability (New York: Routledge, 2000).
47. Whiting, “ASEAN Eyes China”, op. cit., p. 308.
48. Ian Storey, “Singapore and the Rise of China”, in Yee and Storey, The China Threat, op. cit., p. 213.
49. Khong, “Singapore”, op. cit., p. 121.
50. Khong, “Singapore”, op. cit., p. 113.
51. Goh, Meeting the China Challenge, op. cit., p. 13.
52. Khong, “Coping with Strategic Uncertainties”, op. cit., pp. 181–82.
53. Goh, Meeting the China Challenge, op. cit., pp. 13–15.
54. Goh Chok Tong, “Challenges for Asia”, Speech Delivered at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) Special Seminar, Tokyo, 28 March 2003.
55. Leo Suryadinata, China and the ASEAN States: The Ethnic Chinese Dimension (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic, 1985/2005), p. 81.
56. Khong, “Singapore”, op. cit., p. 119; Goh, “Singapore’s Reaction to a Rising China”, op. cit., p. 316.
57. Khong, “Singapore”, op. cit., p. 119.
58. Liow, “Malaysia-China Relations”, op. cit., p. 676.