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  4. Vol 4, Issue 1, 2023

South China Sea Policies of ASEAN Claimant States: A Corpus-based Study

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DOI: 10.23977/polsr.2023.040108 | Downloads: 17 | Views: 449

Author(s)

Xue Ma 1

Affiliation(s)

1 School of Foreign Languages, University of Sanya, Sanya, China

Corresponding Author

Xue Ma

ABSTRACT

The South China Sea (SCS) issue has evolved to gain global attention and has serious economic and geo-political implications. This study analyzes the SCS policies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) claimant states based on the self-build corpus. Combined with the facts and statistical results, the study shows that different claimants adopted different policies to address disputes, especially regarding the response to China’s activities in the region. Vietnam does its utmost to promote the internationalization of SCS on every occasion and Philippines' confrontational policies have changed considerably under President Duterte's administration. Along with the responsibilities of being a regional leader, Indonesia persists in its honest broker role and emphasizes that the resolution of the SCS issue should be based on the unity and agreement of all the ASEAN members. Pragmatic and low-profile policies are Malaysia's long-term keynote and it does not want to sacrifice its economy at the threat of confrontation with its close ally, China. The results also show that the corpus-based method has the potential to be a useful quantitative complement to future relative research, but the language sources are a limitation that need consideration in future studies.

KEYWORDS

South China Sea, SCS policies, ASEAN claimant states, China, corpus-based

CITE THIS PAPER

Xue Ma, South China Sea Policies of ASEAN Claimant States: A Corpus-based Study. Journal of Political Science Research (2023) Vol. 4: 51-68. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/DOI: 10.23977/polsr.2023.040108.

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