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Researcher(s):
Majel Kong
ENVS course(s): 400 Initiated: September 2012 Completed: May 2013 Go to project site
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This research seeks to uncover the issue of power balance between countries sharing the Mekong River. In so doing, it raises the question of why China, as an upstream country who has continuously built large and mega dams on upper part of the transboundary Mekong River, has not been contested for its action by the downstream countries, such as Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. To construct the answer for this question, this research employs the concept “soft power,” which is defined as the ability of one country to get others to want the outcomes it seeks to acquire through the use of cooperation rather than sanction or coercion. As such, it is argued that China’s success in wielding its “soft power” in ASEAN, Southeast Asia’s largest regional institution of which the four downstream countries are officially apart, effectively serves to deter the willingness of these countries to confront China for its action. Three pieces of evidence are analyzed to study China’s soft power in ASEAN: 1.) China’s 2012 Energy Policy; 2.) China’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2012); and 3.) China-ASEAN Dialogue Relations. The analysis of such evidence reveals that China’s success in constructing its soft power in the downstream Mekong countries stems directly from its success in laying its soft power in ASEAN. This success is governed by three primary factors: China’s ability to produce foreign policies that match those of the ASEAN, its consistent effort to tighten its economic cooperation with the region, and its relentless pronouncement as a strong promoter of regional peace and stability. Ultimately, this study sheds some insight on how, in the absence of balance of power, more powerful countries can easily exploit transboundary resources at the expense of other less power countries that share those resources.