No Safe Harbour: Is economic reliance on the People's Republic of China sinking regional foreign policy independence?

Abstract

CHARLES UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Institute of Political Studies Department of Political Science Master's Thesis No Safe Harbour: Is Economic Reliance on the People's Republic of China Sinking Regional Foreign Policy Independence in the East-Asia Pacific? ABSTRACT This paper has been commissioned to explore the relationship between political and economic dependency of East-Asia Pacific nations, with a GDP (nominal) of over US$100 billion, on China. Ten case nations were selected for analysis; Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. Two separate metrics were created; the "Economic Entanglement Index (EEI)" and "Political Dependency Index (PDI)", containing a total of six and five individual indicators each, respectively. Analysing this data, I was able to quantify the levels of political and economic dependency each of these ten case nations shared with China. Singapore was ranked as the most dependent nation in both categories while Japan ranked the least dependent for the EEI and tied with Australia for least dependent in the PDI. Both indexes were also combined to create an overall "Sino-dependency score". My analysis indicated a moderate correlation between the levels of economic and political dependency on China. In...