Structural sources of Malaysia's South China Sea policy: power uncertainties and small-state hedging

ABSTRACT

This essay traces the structural sources of Malaysia's South China Sea policy. It argues that Malaysia's ‘light-hedging’ approach is primarily a smaller-state's response to growing systemic pressure arising from power asymmetry, rivalry, and uncertainties. The features of this approach are: an insistence on not taking sides, concurrent adoption of open deference and indirect defiance, and an active effort to cultivate a fallback position, all aimed at reducing multiple risks associated with the uncertainties of US commitment , China's long-term intentions, and their future relations. We have arrived at three main findings. First, structural impact matters: as geopolitical uncertainty increases, weaker states hedge more deeply. Second, smaller states do have agency, even if only in a low-profile manner. Because smaller states have been disadvantaged under an asymmetric power structure, they often use a combination of diplomatic, legal, developmental, and defence means to shape favourable external conditions. Third, while hedging is chiefly a result of structural factors, the forms and degree of a state's hedging activism are necessarily a function of its threat perceptions, elite interests and other unit-level variables. These factors explain Malaysia's light form of hedging: quiet action and limited defiance alongside open accommodation in managing the South China Sea disputes.

KEYWORDS:

• Malaysia
• South China Sea
• hedging
• smaller states
• China-Southeast Asia relations
• Malaysian Defence White Paper

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education's grant number TR@M001-2019, ‘Sumber Semulajadi dan Potensi Pembangunan Strategik Ekonomi Luar Pantai Malaysia: Pulau Layang-Layang’. They would like to thank Elina Noor, Fong Chin Wei, BA Hamzah, Johan Saravanamuttu, Ivy Kwek, Marzuki Mohamad, Nazery Khalid, Ngeow Chow Bing, Nizam Basiron, Khairil Shah Mat Lazim, Khairul Nizam Jamalus, Abdul Razak Ahmad, Ruhanie Ahmad, Sumathy Permal, Yusri Yusoff, Zakaria Haji Ahmad and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and suggestions. They also thank Izyan Hay, Wong Yit Xiang and Atiqah Mokhter for excellent research support. All shortcomings are the authors’ own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For an elaboration on and examples of the distinctions between heavy-hedging and light-hedging, see Kuik (2020a).

2 The domestic logic of elite legitimation is elaborated in Kuik Cheng-Chwee and Lai Yew Meng, ‘Domestic Determinants of Malaysia's South China Sea Policy: The Politics of Light-Hedging’, unpublished manuscript.

3 Before the ‘bridging linchpin’ role was enunciated in Malaysia's inaugural Defence White Paper, it was first mentioned by Muhyiddin Yassin, then Minister of Home Affairs, at a close-door session hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC during his working visit to the United States in September 2019. Muhyiddin, who later became Malaysia's eighth Prime Minister in March 2020, said he would like to envisage Malaysia ‘as a linchpin nation with a primary role to bridge the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions’, building partnerships with countries in the two regions to spur domestic, regional and global economic growth, and binding those nations through institutions that promote shared security, shared prosperity and shared identity. He added these ‘three inextricably related linchpin roles of bridging, building and binding the two oceanic regions require Malaysia to initiate and strengthen genuine cooperation with multiple countries, including the US’ [emphasis added]. See The Malay Mail, 17 September 2019.

4 Some of the text in this sub-section draws from Kuik (2018).

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education’s grant number TR@M001-2019, ‘Sumber Semulajadi dan Potensi Pembangunan Strategik Ekonomi Luar Pantai Malaysia: Pulau Layang-Layang’.

Notes on contributors

Yew Meng Lai

Yew Meng LAI is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations and Dean of the Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning (CPKLL), Universiti Malaysia Sabah. He is also a research fellow at the varsity's Small Island Research Centre. Lai obtained his Master's in International Political Economy and Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Warwick. He was formerly attached to the Japan Institute of International Affairs as a Visiting Research Fellow (2003–2004). Lai's research interests include: Japanese/Chinese foreign policy, Sino-Japanese relations, East Asian security, Malaysian politics and foreign policy, and Indonesia-Malaysia relations. Among his notable publications are Security Studies: A Reader (Routledge, 2011); Nationalism and Power Politics in Japan's Relations with China: A Neoclassical Realist Interpretation (Routledge, 2014); ‘Malaysia's Security Concerns: A Contemporary Assessment’ in Meredith L. Weiss (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Malaysia (London, 2015); ‘“Sea of Cooperation” or “Sea of Conflict”?: The South China Sea in the Context of China-ASEAN Maritime Cooperation’, International Journal of China Studies (2017); and a review article of Japan's Security Renaissance: New Policies and Politics for the Twenty-First Century by Andrew L. Oros, Columbia University Press, in Perspectives on Politics (2018).

Cheng-Chwee Kuik

Cheng-Chwee KUIK is Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Asian Studies at the National University of Malaysia (UKM)'s Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS). Dr. Kuik's research concentrates on weaker states’ foreign policy behaviour, regional multilateralism, East Asian security, China-ASEAN relations, and Malaysia's external policy. His publications have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Contemporary China, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Asian Security, as well as edited books. He is co-author (with David M. Lampton and Selina Ho) of Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia (University of California Press, October 2020), and co-editor (with Alice Ba and Sueo Sudo) of Institutionalizing East Asia: Mapping and Reconfiguring Regional Cooperation (Routledge 2016). Dr. Kuik's essay, ‘The Essence of Hedging’ was awarded the Michael Leifer Memorial Prize by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Kuik serves on the editorial boards of Contemporary Southeast Asia, Australian Journal of International Affairs, and Routledge's ‘IR Theory and Practice in Asia’ Book Series. He holds an M.Litt. from the University of St. Andrews, and a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.