Vietnam's foreign policy strategy vis-à-vis China over the South China Sea issues

Bui, Dung Thi Thu (2021) Vietnam's foreign policy strategy vis-à-vis China over the South China Sea issues. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

[English] PDF - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. Download (2MB)

Abstract

When it comes to Vietnam's response to China's threat in the South China Sea, it can be said that most of the arguments revolve around whether Vietnam employs a balancing, bandwagoning, or hedging strategy toward China. Across the literature, there is a general consensus that since the 1990s, Vietnam has engaged in a hedging strategy against China’s threat in the SCS. However, the rise of China and its increasing assertiveness in the SCS, coupled with current explanations of Vietnam’s hedging strategy, caused difficulties in identifying Vietnam’s strategic behavior toward China. Using “the patterns of hedging” built off of Koga’s hedging conceptualization (2018), this paper attempts to identify what type of hedging strategy Vietnam uses and its effectiveness in response to China’s aggressive actions in the SCS. The findings indicated first that Vietnam’s policy toward China’s challenge in the SCS fell into the hedging spectrum but leaned more towards soft hedging given a combination of economic bandwagoning and diplomatic balancing; second, while China increases maritime encroachment in the SCS, rather than pure balancing and bandwagoning, soft hedging is a less risky option for Vietnam against China.

Actions (login required)

View Item