Zhexin Zhang. Australian Journal of Politics & History. Volume 65, Issue 3. September 2019.
Faced by increasing challenges to its national security and development, China has taken active measures to improve its security position in the Asia‐Pacific and to foster a lasting and commonly‐beneficial regional security order based on its “New Asian Security Concept”, highlighting common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable peace. Though the Chinese government tends to follow a bilateral rather than collective approach to consolidate its regional security stance for the time being, one can expect China to push forward an all‐inclusive and comprehensive platform for enhanced collective security. Yet China will not pursue a completely new security order to replace the old one. Instead, it is taking a pragmatic and incremental approach to shape the necessary environment for the evolution of the US‐led hegemonic order into a more pluralistic, inclusive, and comprehensive one, where peace and security are guaranteed through closer political consultation and more integrated economic and social development among regional countries. If Sino‐US relations can be well managed and China keeps projecting its growing power in a restrained and contributive way to provide more public goods for regional peace and development, then one can hope for an Asia‐Pacific security community to take shape in the coming decades.
The Asia‐Pacific region, in particular East Asia, is facing ever graver security challenges. As various tensions interact, many Asia‐Pacific countries have increased their military spending, escalating the security dilemma among them; acute conflicts appear more likely to break out between some countries over territorial disputes or due to competing interests; there is a growing possibility that major regional powers are on their way to form new blocs for strategic competition. Potential flashpoints may emerge in particular along the so‐called “first island chain”—from the Korean Peninsula, the East Sea of China and the Taiwan Strait, to the South China Sea—due in large part to the dynamics of interaction between rising China and its US‐backed neighbours. Non‐traditional security challenges are mounting as well, including growing terrorist threats, organised trans‐border crime, natural disasters and aviation safety issues, to name but a few. In many ways, security challenges within the Asia‐Pacific appear to be at their worst since the end of the Cold War, contrary to the prevailing confidence and expectation for greater regional integration and security cooperation merely a decade ago.
Undoubtedly, the future of Asia‐Pacific security largely depends on the extent to which regional countries are able to foster a general consensus on what kind of security order best serves their common interests and, more importantly, how they can jointly improve the security environment in which they all have a great stake. To help bridge the gaps of understanding among regional countries on major security dynamics and trends of the future, this article tries to answer two questions. Why is the US‐led hegemonic security order in the Asia‐Pacific giving way to a more pluralistic and complex order? And how does Beijing see its role in fostering such a new regional security order?
This article consists of four sections: the first explores the transformation of the Asia‐Pacific security order; the second compares the different approaches advocated by regional countries to enhance peace and stability of the region; the third analyzes China’s endeavour to implement the approach to security that it has articulated in the past decade; and the concluding section discusses the likely future trends of Asia‐Pacific security dynamics.
A Hegemonic Security Order in Transition
A US‐led hegemonic security order has prevailed in the Asia‐Pacific since the end of the Cold War. That does not mean that the United States always lies at the center of deliberation and settlement of salient security issues, but that it remains a key factor to those issues regardless of the growing engagement of other regional powers like China, Japan, Australia, Russia or India. Most importantly, the United States still boasts its extended alliance system, overwhelming military strength, forward deployment at most strategic choke points, and decisive agenda‐setting power in nearly all regional security institutions. In spite of this, the US‐led security order seems to be giving way to a more pluralistic and complex order, which in turn triggers growing concern from regional countries.
Weakening Hegemonic Security Order in the Asia‐Pacific
Under the US leadership, the Asia‐Pacific enjoyed nearly two decades of relative peace and stability, setting the stage for the rapid progress of the regional economy and closer cooperation on all arenas. Since the early 2010s, however, the hegemonic order has increasingly been ill‐suited to the changing security dynamics of the region, the most significant of which is China’s expanding global and regional influence.
Following the global financial crisis of 2008, the United States was concerned that it risked being gradually excluded from the Asia‐Pacific and that regional rules and norms might be rewritten. Consequently, the Obama administration began to adopt the “Rebalance to Asia” strategy aiming to consolidate its regional role to foster “America’s Pacific Century”. Unfortunately, the US balancing efforts were widely interpreted in China as a means of containment, and thus not only further encouraged China’s accelerating naval buildup and intransigent stance with regard to its “core interests”, especially territorial integrity, but also unsettled the past consensus among regional countries on further enhancing regional economic integration and security cooperation.
The South China Sea issue is a case in point. Before the US engagement in the issue, the differing claims of the five claimant states to a range of islands and reefs in the South China Sea—China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines—had been generally well managed bilaterally or through a number of cooperative mechanisms between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) like “10+1 (ASEAN plus China)” or “10+3 (ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea)”. Occasional conflicts relating to fisheries and hydrocarbon exploration had been kept in check, a process some attributed to the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) signed between China and ASEAN countries in 2002. Yet from China’s perspective, when the United States began to advocate settling disputes by international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) yet to be signed by itself, and put on Freedom of Navigation (FON) operations to exhibit its naval power and “interest in the South China Sea”, ASEAN countries were divided between a legalistic and a more political approach to the dispute. As a result, the issue has become more contentious, leading to heightened security risks between China and other claimant countries.
In the meantime, as criticism of China became more prominent in many ASEAN‐centred cooperative institutions such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the East Asia Summit (EAS), more important issues like regional cooperation on fighting terrorism and trans‐border crime as well as on deepening regional economic integration were sidelined, which further aggravated the security dilemma in the region. This led Beijing to turn to other mechanisms—for instance, upgrading the “Xiangshan Forum on International Security Cooperation and Asia‐Pacific Security” from Track 2 to Track 1.5 in 2014, and strengthening the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence‐Building Measures in Asia (CICA)—to try to enhance mutual strategic trust and practical cooperation with regional countries. That further undermines the confidence of many regional countries in the US‐led security order. From this perspective, the United States’ efforts to sustain the hegemonic order turned out to weaken the order instead.
Moreover, the US‐led hegemonic order was not well equipped to tackle the increasing non‐traditional security challenges in the Asia‐Pacific, which may lead to acute conflicts among countries if not properly managed. Such challenges include growing terrorism, piracy and cross‐border crime, pandemics and natural disasters, as well as aviation accidents like MH370 and AWQ8501 in 2014. Competition over natural resources like oil, minerals, and water has also caused lasting contention and even skirmishes between regional countries. A typical case is the China‐Vietnam interaction around the “HD‐981 oil rig incident”, in which large riots against Chinese businesses took place in Vietnam in mid‐May 2014 when the Vietnamese and Chinese coast guards clashed in a standoff near a Chinese oil rig dispatched to a contested area of the South China Sea, causing several casualties as well as nearly two months of diplomatic protests, evacuation of thousands of Chinese citizens from Vietnam, and reinforced protection of the rig by China. That indicates that serious non‐traditional security issues can escalate into diplomatic and even military conflict due to the lack of regional mechanisms to settle such issues in a timely and effective manner.
Growing social turmoil in some countries also poses new challenges to regional stability regardless of US military predominance in the Asia‐Pacific. Rising populism and nationalism mean that many states find it difficult to seek diplomatic settlement of disputes and even to implement agreements already signed with other countries, which undermines the political trust and communication between them. Meanwhile, ongoing low‐intensity conflicts continue to unsettle a number of Southeast Asian countries, such as the enduring fight between Philippine government troops and the anti‐government forces in Mindanao, the attack of northern Myanmar by local Kokang forces in March 2017 that claimed more than thirty lives, and lasting ethnic tension in Indonesia.
Since President Trump took office in January 2017, the US‐led hegemonic order has continued to wane both due to his “America First” doctrine in economic and security realms, and to the lingering uncertainty of his strategy toward the region. Despite the long‐term goal set in the belated national security strategy report to work closely with Japan, Australia and India—the revived “Quad” structure—to deal with such “security challenges” as the North Korean nuclear issue and China’s power projection in the Indo‐Pacific, President Trump does not seem to have much interest in “reasserting the U.S. leadership in the Asia‐Pacific”, as sought by top officials of the previous administration shortly after his inauguration. In fact, even if he does, many doubt the United States’ capacity to uphold its security commitment to the region as it did a decade ago.
From Hegemonic Order to Pluralistic Order
Faced by the changing security realities, the US‐led hegemonic security order in the Asia‐Pacific is giving way to a pluralistic order that features multilateral consultation and cooperation (especially among major regional powers for the time being), a bigger role of economic and social factors, as well as more informal and ad hoc security coalitions. Though it will take many years, even decades, for the existing hegemonic order to evolve into a stable pluralistic security order that is embraced by most regional countries, the transition away from the old order has already begun, generating more strategic anxiety in nearly every country and creating higher levels of security uncertainty.
Whilst the United States will remain the strongest power and key actor in regional security management, it can no longer dictate the terms of Asia‐Pacific security affairs as it did at the beginning of the century when many regional countries felt they had little option than to support the US‐led “war on terror”. Thus it has to seek support from regional security partners by strengthening bilateral security ties and, more importantly, by enhancing multilateral consultation and cooperation in order to tackle those imminent security crises. These include, for example, the Obama administration’s efforts—though futile in the end—to seek help from China for sanctions against Russia on the Ukraine crisis in March 2014, as well as the Trump administration’s multi‐pronged approach to address North Korea’s intensive nuclear and missile tests.
Next, economic and social factors are playing a bigger role in the pluralistic security order of the Asia‐Pacific. Most observers are skeptical about the enduring dichotomy that regional countries generally expect China to be the main driver of regional economy while depending on the United States to maintain peace and stability. Yet the paradox remains: without close US security engagement, China would have to shift a lot of national resources onto regional security affairs and thus lose momentum in driving the regional economy. Similarly, without China’s economic engine and its many initiatives to promote economic and social integration of the region, the United States would face a much more nationalistic and insecure region where it has to provide a higher level of security assurance than it currently does. That is why Chinese President Xi Jinping highlighted “sustainable security” in his keynote speech to the Fourth CICA Summit in Shanghai on 21 May, 2014:Development is the foundation of security and security constitutes the precondition for development […] For most Asian countries, development means the greatest security and the master key to regional security issues. To build an Asian security mansion that could stand the test of wind storms, we need to focus on development, actively improve people’s lives and narrow down the wealth gap so as to cement the foundation of security. We need to advance the process of common development and regional integration, foster sound interactions and synchronized progress of regional economic cooperation and security cooperation, and promote sustainable security through sustainable development.Finally, more informal and ad hoc security coalitions are growing alongside the US alliance system in the Asia‐Pacific. The strongest pillar of the US‐led hegemonic security order has been the United States’ “hub‐and‐spoke” system that is centred on its bilateral treaty alliances and supplemented by security partnerships with such regional countries as Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam. With the “America First” doctrine of the Trump administration, however, many countries no longer feel as reassured as they used to. For example, South Korea’s Moon Jae‐in administration has demonstrated a firm stance in opposing a joint military approach with the United States to settle the North Korean nuclear issue but seeking solutions by multilateral consultation with China, Russia and other related countries. For another example, though many ASEAN members are close security partners of the United States, ASEAN as a whole has maintained a neutral position between China and the United States, working with both, together or separately, on various platforms to deal with maritime security and non‐traditional security issues, such as negotiation of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC), the ASEAN‐China Maritime Consultation, as well as many other mechanisms to counter terrorism, piracy, human trafficking and cross‐border financial crime. Especially on non‐traditional security issues, those non‐treaty and ad hoc security partnerships are already playing a bigger role than the US alliance system.
In short, a pluralistic security order appears to be slowly replacing the US‐led hegemonic order in the Asia‐Pacific with more complex interdependence among nations and a growing need for multilateral consultation and cooperation on common security challenges for the region. The policy implications of such shifts are manifold. Some “offensive” realists argue that in response the United States should reassert its leadership while constraining the rise of emerging powers like China, while “defensive” realists argue for sharing regional leadership with China on regional security affairs. Liberals call for better accommodation of the emerging powers’ role in the US‐centred liberal institutions and the Western‐led international system. And constructivists advocate for the construction of a regional security community where member states are bound together by a collective regional identity and shared political values. Yet one thing is certain that no power or even power coalition can dominate all regional security issues; rather, more regional‐level interactions—sometimes involving such non‐state actors as NGOs and large enterprises—are expected to enhance regional security by closer economic and social integration.
No Single Road Leads to Rome: Competing Approaches to Peace and Stability
States tend to be slow to catch up to changes in strategic realities. Regardless of the substantial shifts in the Asia‐Pacific security environment over the past decade, most countries still persist in their inherited approaches to promote regional security cooperation and have made related security strategies and defence policies accordingly. In general, there are three broad visions or approaches among regional countries.
The Extended‐Security Alliance Approach
Highlighting the US leading role in Asia‐Pacific security, this approach has been advocated by the mainstream strategic circle of the United States, Japan, Australia and other partner countries. Since the early years of the Obama administration, Washington has been pushing forward this approach by extending new security partnerships based on the existing security alliance system. As Quadrennial Defense Review 2010 stated:In the Pacific Rim, we are deepening our partnership with Australia, an alliance that stretches beyond Asia to provide essential cooperation on a wide range of global security challenges. In Southeast Asia, we are working to enhance our long‐standing alliances with Thailand and the Philippines, deepen our partnership with Singapore, and develop new strategic relationships with Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam, to address issues such as counterterrorism, counternarcotics, and support to humanitarian assistance operations in the region.The Trump administration has been trying to draw India into the partnership network, as indicated in the 2017 national security strategy report:We welcome India’s emergence as a leading global power and stronger strategic and defense partner. We will seek to increase quadrilateral cooperation with Japan, Australia, and India. […] We will expand our defense and security cooperation with India, a Major Defense Partner of the United States, and support India’s growing relationships throughout the region.This approach has four central features: (1) it aims to upgrade ad hoc security cooperation into rule‐based institutional cooperation by encouraging multilateral agreements with legally‐binding forces, such as the COC among disputants to the South China Sea; (2) it tends to link political, economic cooperation and security cooperation together to create a more comprehensive effect, as seen in the Obama administration’s promotion of the Trans‐Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trump administration’s endeavour to renegotiate bilateral trade deals with key security partners like Japan and South Korea; (3) it underscores the linkage between traditional and non‐traditional security issues and tries to win more strategic support from regional countries by providing natural disaster relief, humanitarian aid or other assistance to their urgent needs; and (4) it encourages military capacity building and a bigger role for the U.S. security partners so as to share the US security burden. Apparently, this is intended to consolidate the US‐led regional security order and check the influence of emerging China.
The Consultative‐Co‐development Approach
Based on the “New Asian Security Concept” proposed by Chinese President Xi in 2014, this approach aims to establish a more inclusive approach to security by consultation and enhanced mutual trust through incremental regional economic and social integration. China, Russia and a number of inland‐Asia countries are supporters of this approach not only because many of them have been practically isolated from various Asia‐Pacific security mechanisms, but also due to their shared apprehension about the motives behind US regional security engagement. It is in this context that President Xi called for efforts to enhance security consultation and cooperation among member states “to increase strategic mutual trust, reduce mutual misgivings, seek common ground while resolving differences and live in harmony with each other”.
Compared with the US’ extended‐security alliance approach, what China styles as its consultative‐co‐development approach emphasizes the inclusiveness of security mechanisms, equal status of all regional countries, the interrelationship between security and economic cooperation, as well as strategic patience in strengthening security cooperation. It is also predicated on the view that there should be no political threshold set for any new member that is committed to playing a responsible role in existing security mechanisms, and that disputes should be settled by fostering strategic trust and political consensuses among related countries through continuing consultation and coordination of policies, in contrast to the international law and legally‐binding agreements approach of the United States. Besides, more patience is needed to build trust and cooperative habits among countries before their cooperation is institutionalized. In essence, this collective approach features political consultation and incremental cooperation among regional countries, so as to foster a more balanced and stable regional security order.
Notably, “co‐development” has been given a greater emphasis in this approach over the past few years as China has come to recognise that unbalanced development is a major source of regional instability. It believes that a new security order can only grow out of common sense of security based on sound economic and social development of individual countries. This is what lies behind China’s advocacy of the notion of a “community of common destiny” among Asian nations and its investment of significant national resources into building the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
The ASEAN‐centred Community‐Building Approach
Since the end of the Cold War, ASEAN countries have been advocating an approach based on “ASEAN centrality”, promoting such regional security mechanisms as the EAS, ARF and ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM+) while strengthening ASEAN integration and its role in regional security. Its aim is to build a security community centred on itself. Echoing the founding principles of the ASEAN, this approach features: (1) the “ASEAN way” in settling disputes, underlining mutual respect of each other’s sovereignty, non‐intervention into others’ internal affairs, no use of force, and consensus among all regional countries on major security affairs; (2) ASEAN’s leadership in setting regional security agendas and a balancing role it plays between major regional powers; (3) the peaceful nature of security cooperation, i.e., to prevent, deter and tackle various disputes and conflicts by peaceful means in order to promote regional resilience; (4) openness of security cooperation to interested external parties and adequate concern about extraterritorial security issues; and (5) a long‐term goal to enhance common security of all regional countries through cooperation in all fields.
Apart from its emphasis on ASEAN centrality and openness to extraterritorial powers, this approach is similar to China’s consultative‐co‐development approach. However, it is contingent on substantial ASEAN unity and capacity that is still largely absent after two decades of ASEAN integration. As a matter of fact, due to increasing U.S. security engagement or their security concerns about China, some ASEAN members like Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines (at least before Rodrigo Duterte became President in June 2016) have been more inclined to rally around the United States, in stark contrast to the ASEAN principle of unity and its centrality in regional affairs. ASEAN‐centred community‐building appears to be too idealistic for a period dominated by rising strategic competition between China and the United States.
With regard to the changing balance of power, one may wonder why more countries would have not joined with China in balancing against the US hegemony and consolidating the burgeoning pluralistic order. An apparent answer is that China has been rising too fast and in too‐high profile a manner for regional countries to get used to, let alone to embrace it. From 2001 to 2013, China’s GDP, share in world trade, military spending, new patents filed and number of enterprises in Fortune 500 have all increased by three times or above. This has augmented China’s confidence and frightened its neighbours. Another reason is that China’s territorial disputes with some other countries have been magnified by the intervention of outside powers. For example, China’s sometimes unduly vehement reaction for self‐defence, such as speeding naval buildup and land reclamation in the South China Sea, is widely interpreted as unilateral assertion of sovereignty and rights that destabilises the region. The Chinese government’s stone‐faced explanation helps little in assuaging regional concerns.
In comparison, the United States has done a better job in obtaining support from regional countries and international society by highlighting international law and norms as well as drawing Japan, Australia, India and some European powers into joint engagement in the South China Sea issue. Washington’s FON operations are also welcomed by many regional countries as a powerful means to check China’s potential territorial ambition. Against this backdrop, the US regional allies and countries in territorial disputes with China tend to bandwagon with the United States against China, lest it grow into an assertive power that inherits the US supremacy, but not the responsibilities necessarily endowed with that hegemonic status.
It must be pointed out that regional countries’ approaches to enhance Asia‐Pacific security may vary with the changing security environment over the time. For example, Australia has altered its vision of an open security cooperation framework at the turn of the century to give more support to the US‐centred extended‐security alliance approach. Japan has also revised its past vision of an “East Asian Community” and begun to closely follow the United States in balancing against China. Owing to the uncertainty about the Trump administration’s Indo‐Pacific strategy and of the strategic relationship between China and the United States, it is too early to judge which approach will garner more support from regional countries over the coming decade. What is most important is that the new pluralistic security order must be based on more dialogue, cooperation and common development among Asia‐Pacific countries.
Promoting Consultation and Co-development: China’s Endeavour to Foster a Pluralistic Security Order
Over the past decade, international criticism of China’s rapid growth of military expenditure and assertive security stance has been on the rise, while China’s arguable “strategic overstretch” in recent years has aggravated regional concerns about its “imperial ambitions”. Yet, China’s regional security strategy has by and large remained defensive in nature. Though there is often a gap between its pacifist gestures and substantive actions, China has sought to maintain peace and stability in the Asia‐Pacific while upholding its perceived “core interests”, so as to foster a security community that accommodates the substantive changes of regional security dynamics.
China’s Vision of a Pluralistic Security Order
Since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, China has considered hegemonic powers from outside its neighbourhood—the United States first, the USSR later, and again the United States after the end of the Cold War—as a major challenge to peace and stability of the Asia‐Pacific. Because most regional nations are developing nations and former colonies of Western powers, China has been calling on them to “understand and respect each other, as well as sympathize with and support each other” in their common cause of opposing dominance and manipulation of outside hegemonic powers; and thus they should “shelve disputes” and join hands under the “five principles of peaceful‐coexistence” to promote regional unity and collective strength.
Rather than rally with regional countries to confront the prevailing US military presence in the Asia‐Pacific, China has adopted a peaceful engagement strategy to enhance regional security through the market. China insists that peace and development are indivisible, and hence economic and social development of all nations serves as a necessary basis of lasting peace in the region. It also believes that regional peace and stability can be effectively achieved through closer regional cooperation, especially economic and social integration. Such beliefs are well reflected in China’s proposal in 2002 of the “New Security Concept” that features mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and cooperation, and was further elaborated in President Xi Jinping’s “New Asian Security Concept” in 2014, which aims to promote “common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security” in Asia, so that all regional countries can “jointly build a road for security of Asia that is shared by and win‐win to all”.
Identifying the four key elements of the “New Asian Security Concept”, President Xi sketched the Chinese vision of an ideal regional security order as one marked by peaceful and friendly consultation among all nations on an equal footing, and by the mutual enhancement between security cooperation and economic cooperation. It is an order of less centralized but all‐inclusive collective security, but the essence of it for the time being is mutual accommodation among China, the United States and other major powers, of each other’s indispensable role in regional security affairs. It also implies that it is in the best interest of smaller nations in the region to facilitate major‐power cooperation rather than try to take advantage of major‐power conflicts for short‐term benefits. President Xi’s proposal of the “New Asian Security Concept” appears to reflect China’s increasingly proactive stance in regional security issues and a priority shift of China’s foreign policy from economic benefits onto security and political interests, in order to meet China’s pressing security demands.
Echoing the “New Asian Security Concept”, China has been advocating the building of a new “regional security architecture that suits the realities in the region and meets the needs of all sides”, by which China would strive to foster an all‐inclusive, OSCE‐type regional platform as the core of the new Asia‐Pacific security architecture which allows for collective decision‐making through political consultation among concerned countries. As President Xi proposed at the 4th Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in May 2014: We should take into full account the historical background and reality of Asia’s security issues, adopt a multi‐pronged and holistic approach, and enhance regional security governance in a coordinated way. While tackling the immediate security challenges facing the region, we should also make plans for addressing potential security threats, and avoid a fragmented and palliative approach that only treats the symptoms. As this author explains in another article, the new security architecture would have four key elements: firstly, it is inclusive of all Asia‐Pacific nations and prevents setting high entrance standards for any new participant of the region; secondly, it emphasizes decision‐making and dispute settlement through political consultation among related nations on an equal footing, instead of relying solely on international law and treaties; thirdly, it highlights the mutual effect between economic cooperation and security cooperation, and adopts an incremental approach to enhancing collective security through economic integration and functional cooperation on non‐traditional security issues; and finally, it encourages the joint role of major powers in shouldering more responsibilities and providing more public goods for regional peace and stability. This ultimately is a regional security community that functions as a certain “concert of powers”. What is worth mentioning is that China is not seeking to minimize the US role, but to win US recognition of China’s equally important role in the Asia‐Pacific security architecture.
China’s Promotion of a Regional Security Community
Mainly due to growing strategic pressure from the United States and its security allies, China has adopted an incremental approach to foster a regional security community, the core of which is to maintain a stable and cooperative environment for its continuing development. That is to say, recognising the overwhelming US power in the Asia‐Pacific, China intends to enhance its security status and regional security cooperation by cautiously increasing its involvement in regional security issues on a bottom‐line defence posture.
Above all, China has kept strengthening its military power in line with its economic growth. From 2001 to 2016, China’s military expenditure has increased from less than 12 per cent that of the United States to roughly 37 per cent, with an annual growth rate dwarfing almost all other countries of the world. China has also taken active measures to upgrade the entire defence system, in particular by enlarging its navy as well as reorganising the military administration structure and military command areas. Meanwhile, China is adjusting the past strategic guideline of “tao guang yang hui [keeping a low profile while developing its capabilities]” to more confidently demonstrating its strength and proactively forestalling challenges to its perceived “core interests” (mostly related to its sovereign or territorial integrity). This has been exemplified in its establishment of an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea in November 2013, the impressive military parade in commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of the anti‐fascist war on 3 September 2015, and its land reclamation activities in the South China Sea in the past few years. Many Chinese believe that such a confident stance on the world arena would give China better leverage both in dealing with the United States and in shaping a new environment for better security cooperation in the region.
Next, China has been trying to enhance regional security cooperation through closer economic integration for common development. Although such regional economic integration processes as the China‐Japan‐South Korea free trade zone (FTZ) and the ASEAN‐plus‐X (10 + X) are losing momentum amid lingering security tensions between China and some regional countries, China has been working closely with concerned countries to finalise negotiation on setting up a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) that includes all major economies in the region. By promoting such economic initiatives as the AIIB and the BRI, China is trying to draw regional countries onto its “express train of development”, consolidating the economic as well as emotional basis for an Asia‐Pacific security community.
Moreover, China is expanding its inland Asia‐based security partnerships as the foundation of a regional security community. Despite the fact that China’s security engagement has been focusing on its eastern and southern peripheries, it has attached more importance to strengthening inland‐Asia partnerships—mostly with Central, West and South Asian nations—with regard to growing US security engagement in the Pacific region. On the one hand, China keeps strengthening its comprehensive partnership of strategic cooperation with Russia as a counterweight to US dominance in regional security affairs; on the other hand, China is trying to enhance the role of inland‐Asia security mechanisms like the SCO and CICA and link them to such Pacific security mechanisms as the ADMM+, ARF and EAS.
Finally, China has been learning to adopt a legalistic approach to security community‐building in the Asia‐Pacific. Heavily influenced by the Confucian culture in which consultation and mutual compromise are a preferred way to settle disputes, China has generally favoured a political approach in security management and cooperation with others, evidenced by its insistence in solving disputes with other South China Sea claimants through bilateral talks, and its tendency to avoid taking punitive measures against North Korea’s breach of international norms in its nuclear and missile testing. Yet such reliance on political consultation is being gradually supplanted by rule‐based, legalistic thinking in recent years, both because the political approach finds less and less resonance from other nations and because China is undergoing a reform of its judicial system. In recent years, the Chinese leadership has spoken internationally about China’s determination to promote the “legalistic development of international relations” and to “ensure that all countries abide by international law and universally‐acknowledged basic principles of international relations”, so as to “foster an open, transparent and equitable ‘new Asia‐Pacific security architecture'”. For instance, although China’s rejection of the ruling by an international tribunal in Hague made in July 2016 over disputed waters of the South China Sea with the Philippines is widely criticized by the international community, China has modified its past persistence in “solving disputes only between China and related countries” to a “dual‐track” approach, which makes multilateral negotiation on a COC possible.
Gap between China’s Words and Deeds
In spite of the repeated statement of Chinese leaders on China sticking to the path of peaceful development and seeking to build an Asia‐Pacific security community in a responsible and incremental way, regional countries remain wary of China not only because of its rapidly growing military power, but also due to the frequent gaps between its policy statements and its actual behaviour.
As a leading Chinese strategist observes, President Xi’s leadership seems to have put forward two contradictory sets of messages in its words and actions: one suggests that China is taking a more assertive line, such as a shift in the driving aim of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from military modernization to “being capable of fighting, and fighting victoriously”, high‐profile reports on new breakthroughs in China’s military build‐up, and a hardening posture on its territorial and maritime disputes with neighbouring countries. The other, however, highlights China’s “peaceful development” orientation, sincere efforts to build a “new type of great‐power relationship” with the United States and other regional powers, as well as concrete measures to implement its “good neighbour policy”, especially among ASEAN nations. It reflects “the complexity and inner dilemmas of China’s foreign policy under Xi Jinping”.
How to explain this ostensible gap between China’s pacifist rhetoric and assertive behaviour in recent years? Does it imply that China does not truly intend to foster a pluralistic Asia‐Pacific security order, but to replace the United States as a new regional hegemon? Indeed, there was a time of exuberance—roughly from 2010 to 2013—all over China about the impending possibility of surpassing the United States in both economic weight and development approach, and hence a lot of discussion on the “China model” and pertinence of the “tao guang yang hui” principle among the academia and mass media. But China’s strategic policy elite soon realized that it would take China many more years to develop into a truly powerful country in all aspects, and that striving for regional leadership too eagerly would do nothing but invite more hostility from regional countries. Therefore, Xi Jinping emphasized a more cautious strategic approach as he became General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in November 2012, warning against the risk of overstretching China’s power while ignoring its strategic weaknesses.
From this perspective, the many seemingly assertive actions of China—such as building a “blue‐water” navy, setting up the ADIZ in the East China Sea, showing an intransigent stance in territorial disputes with Japan and some ASEAN countries, and seeking quasi‐naval bases in the Indian Ocean—are all intended to safeguard its long‐held core national interests and secure a peaceful environment for its lasting development, rather than compete with the United States for regional hegemony. In other words, China will most likely appear assertive when its perceived “core interests” are under constant threat, while elsewhere, it tends to be “developing through more opening‐up and win‐win cooperation, more actively engaged in global economic governance, and trying to provide more global public goods”.
Again, China’s territorial disputes with the Philippines serve as a good example. When the Philippines under President Aquino III (2010‐2016) abandoned the past policy of “shelving disputes” and pushed China into the arbitration court under the UNCLOS, China adopted a “non‐acceptance and non‐participation” attitude, emphasizing “three NOs” to the international society that “the Philippine action has no basis on international law, the international arbitration tribunal has no jurisdiction over the case, and the tribunal has no legitimacy”. When the Philippine government strengthened its naval presence with the US support in disputed areas, China responded by sending more naval vessels to protect Chinese fishing boats and by speeding up land reclamation in the South China Sea. Yet when new Philippine President Rodrigo R. Duterte assumed office in June 2016 and pledged to “properly settle those maritime issues through bilateral channels and according to mutual consensus reached by both sides”, the Sino‐Philippine relationship improved rapidly, which facilitated the negotiation between China and the ASEAN on signing the COC. In fact, China and the Philippines have been working so closely on issues related to the continental shelf of the South China Sea that some feel that it “provides a good example” for other disputants in the region.
Conclusion: Toward a Security Community in the Asia‐Pacific
People have a natural fear of change. Similarly, Asia‐Pacific nations tend to view any major change in the regional security environment as a potential threat to them and try to tackle those changes to maintain the old security order. It is thus not surprising that many regional countries try to bandwagon with a “benign hegemon”, the United States, to balance the influence and constrain the behaviour of rapidly rising powers like China. The key is how China interprets and responds to such concern and action, as much as how other countries perceive and accommodate China’s inevitable rise. For instance, while Chinese scholars criticize the United States for “stirring up trouble on the South China Sea issue” to place a wedge between China and ASEAN nations, they should consider why many nations are eager to bind with the United States despite the risk of upsetting their relations with China. Likewise, while regional countries tend to be worried about such Chinese moves as more joint naval exercises with Asia‐Pacific countries and the promotion of the BRI, they need to take China’s goodwill seriously and consider the benefits those moves can bring to common security and development of the region
At present, most Asia‐Pacific countries find themselves in a security paradox: they would all suffer in an enduring strategic confrontation between China and the United States, yet at the same time, they expect the two giants to check one another. Both in military and economic arenas, the United States is losing its absolute advantage over China. Should a war break out between them, it would “have no winner; and inflict huge losses on both sides’ military forces. The longer such a war would rage, the greater the importance of economic, domestic political, and international effects”.
Meanwhile, due to President Trump’s “America First” doctrine and the uncertainty about his Indo‐Pacific strategy, many countries have been increasingly worried about the United States withdrawing its security commitments to the region and leaving a “strategic vacuum” for China to fill. Therefore, they tend to bind together to strengthen their collective position vis‐à‐vis China while trying to persuade President Trump to maintain the U.S. security engagement in the region. Such efforts culminated in the U.S. national security strategy report in 2017 that labels China as a “strategic rival” and advocates building the “Quad” with Japan, Australia and India to balance against China. Nevertheless, such actions may very possibly be interpreted by China as a major threat to its national security, which would lead to an acceleration of its military buildup and the adoption of a more assertive security stance. If an acute conflict takes place between China and the United States over the Taiwan issue, the South China Sea issue, or the North Korean nuclear issue, then the burgeoning pluralistic security order in the Asia‐Pacific would come to a halt, replaced by years of chaos or a new Cold‐War order centred on major‐power confrontation.
Therefore, a fundamental consensus of Asia‐Pacific countries on the future regional security order is urgently needed at the moment, by which “the United States would not be so anxious, China not so radical, Russia not so desperate, and Japan not so ‘revisionist'”. That requires not only broadened dialogue and enhanced cooperation among regional countries, but more importantly, timely policy coordination, in particular between China and the United States, on salient regional security issues.
Fortunately, since early 2017, President Trump and President Xi have exchanged views several times on cross‐Taiwan Strait stability, the North Korean nuclear issue, and the US FON operations in the South China Sea, among other things. While exercising strategic patience in developing lasting peace of the region, China is also working more closely with other regional countries to tackle the most urgent security issues like the North Korea nuclear issue, and to speed up the negotiation process of the COC.
It is important to note that in building an Asia‐Pacific security community, China is not seeking to topple the basic rules, but to enhance its role and status while introducing a potentially more effective approach to foster a pluralistic regional order. Anti‐hegemony has been at the core of China’s strategic thinking, and no Chinese regional behaviour so far indicates that the country aims to replace the United States as the next regional hegemon. On the contrary, China’s many economic and security initiatives point at one ultimate goal: to promote a new type of relationship among regional countries based on mutual trust and respect as well as through more consultation and co‐development. That should be the principle that best serves the whole region in the long run.