Structured Dependence: How the Design of Chinese Infrastructure Deals Shapes Political Leverage in Southeast Asia

This thesis argues that political leverage is made in the design of a financing deal rather than in its volume. It develops the concept of the governance package, the bundle of financing terms, delivery arrangements, and institutional commitments a recipient state assumes at signature, and derives four hypotheses about when dependence converts into pressure. The argument is tested through structured comparison and process tracing across the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia, three states that borrowed heavily from the same creditor across the same years and sit astride the same contested sea. Drawing on published loan agreements, the 2016 arbitral award, project-level databases, and reporting of record, the cases show that the volume of Chinese finance does not predict South China Sea conduct. Conversion requires two conditions: dependence concentrated into a chokepoint, and an issue the recipient is willing to trade. Where influence appeared, it traveled through expectation, renegotiation under sunk costs, purchased diplomatic restraint, and coercion at sea, never through accumulated debt itself. A closing comparison with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank shows that multilateral rules strip out the package features that carry leverage. Deal design emerges as an instrument of foreign policy autonomy that borrowing governments themselves control.