Liu, Mingyi (2022) Domestic politics and international ambitions : explaining China’s maritime assertiveness in the South China Sea, 2006-2016. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis examines China’s maritime assertiveness in the South China Sea from 2006 to 2016 with reference to the perspective of domestic politics and foreign policy analysis. Since the 2010s, China’s assertive behaviours in the South China Sea has been believed as one of the most up-to-date examples that enhance the concern of a “China Threat” in the studies of international politics. However, this thesis argues that in order to explore whether China's rise will a threat to the international and regional order, it is essential to look into the “black-box”, that is the domestic circumstance in which a certain foreign policy decision is made at a particular time. The international system is established as an outcome of interactions between individual states through certain foreign policies. Therefore, a simply systemic analysis of international politics that treats the state as a unitary actor in the anarchy international system, while ignoring the origin where a foreign policy decision comes from, cannot provide a full picture of the intention of an individual state to make a certain policy at a particular time.

This thesis builds its research on a framework by combining the main characteristics of the neoclassical realist approach and the bureaucratic politics model of Foreign Policy Analysis, and Jack Snyder’s model of imperial overexpansion. It argues that China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea should not be simply considered as an inevitable outcome of the rise of China. Alternatively, China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea is a product of a perception that China needs to enhance its maritime control in order to protect its Sea Lane of Communication through the South China Sea, while such a concern was originally created by domestic interest groups mainly for domestic politics bargaining and the foreign policy making at the time was in a certain aspect hijacked by domestic politics.

This thesis firstly discusses how the concept of energy security was constructed in the domestic agenda of China since the late 1990s and early 2000s. By evaluating different interest groups’ perception of the energy security, this thesis intends to find out how the concept of energy security has been developed from a technical and economic perspective to a national security issue about maritime control and the security of sea lane of communication in the first years of 2000s, leading to a widely debated topic of the “Malacca Dilemma” in 2005 and 2006.
This thesis then focuses on representative cases of China’s maritime assertiveness in the South China Sea from 2006 to 2016 to find out how China’s maritime assertive behaviours in the South China Sea were adopted to respond to the concern of the security of maritime energy transportation. This paper intends to reinforce to the existing debate on China's rise. In order to understand China's foreign policy behaviours, it is necessary to trace the domestic origins of a certain foreign policy at a particular time. Otherwise, it could lead to a misleading and misunderstanding of China's behaviours at some times.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor J Political Science > JQ Political institutions (Asia, Africa, Australia, Pacific Area, etc.) J Political Science > JZ International relations K Law [Moys] > KT Asia and Pacific
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Maritime law -- China, South China Sea -- Foreign relations, South China Sea -- Politics and government, Law of the sea -- China, China -- Politics and government, Energy security -- China, China -- Foreign relations
Official Date:	October 2022
Dates:	Date Event October 2022 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Politics and International Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Breslin, Shaun ; Hassan, Oz
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	297 pages : illustrations, maps
Language:	eng

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