Table of Contents
From any vantage point, the shift in relations between China and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the past four decades has been nothing less than remarkable. Branded by Beijing at its inception in 1967 as an anti-China and anti-communist regional grouping, ASEAN, in 2007, was openly acknowledging ‘the important role that China has been playing in regional and global affairs’ and the ‘significant’ contributions that close China–ASEAN relations had brought ‘to peace, stability and prosperity in the region and the world at large’ (ASEAN 2007).
At the risk of oversimplification, contemporary theoretical assessments of the evolution of China–ASEAN relations largely coalesce around two main propositions. On one hand, social constructivists argue that normative suasion and change as well as regional identity formation have taken place as a result of efforts by both parties at complex engagement with one another (Acharya 1996; Ba 2006; Johnston and Evans 1999). By and large, these efforts in part attribute the stabilisation and enhancement of China–ASEAN ties to the shared reliance on the non-contractual, non-confrontational, consensus-seeking and process-oriented diplomatic convention advanced by ASEAN—namely, the so-called ‘ASEAN way’. They highlight China’s transition from its initial mistrust of regional arrangements, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, as nefarious strategies aimed at encircling China, to its keen embrace of such and of multilateral diplomacy at large (Johnston 2003; Kuik 2005). For social constructivists, the ASEAN way constitutes a ‘counter-Realpolitik’ philosophy of regional security, which promotes reassuring behaviour over traditional Realpolitik approaches that emphasise competition and coercion (Acharya 1997; Johnston 2003:123). [1]
On the other hand, realists and English School pluralists are considerably less sanguine about prospects for regional peace. They see rising China’s external security calculations as symptomatic of an emerging grand strategy, the key aim of which is to diminish the prospect of its ascent being hindered by other powers in a multipolar strategic environment (Swaine and Tellis 2000; Goldstein 2005). Thus understood, despite China’s ‘acquiescence’ to membership in ASEAN-centred regional arrangements, they question ASEAN’s ability to elicit collaborative behaviour from a hegemonic China that will not bow easily to external pressure (Emmers 2001; Leifer 1996; Lim 1998). Others question the potential gains purportedly accruable to China from its participation in ASEAN-based regionalism and multilateral diplomacy in general (Wang 2000). For them, the ASEAN way is not without merit, having provided, in a limited fashion, a relatively useful ‘rudimentary code of interstate conduct’ that for all intents and purposes continues to guide regional relations (Leifer 1986:151–2). It remains, however, essentially an avoidance strategy for holding at bay ambitious regional aspirations for cooperation and integration that encourage interventionism and emasculate sovereignty norms (Jones and Smith 2007).
Against this backdrop, characterisations of China–ASEAN relations that treat power and reassurance as mutually exclusive categories are unlikely to be helpful for grasping a fuller picture of that complex and nuanced relationship. To be sure, social constructivists do not discount material power, nor do realists and English School pluralists disregard reassurance. That said, in advancing the ASEAN way as ‘counter-Realpolitik’, social constructivists inadvertently play down the softer aspects of power-balancing behaviour, which could assume the form of political balancing and/or communal/cooperative balancing (Emmers 2003; Khong 2004; Tan with Cossa 2001). Such balancing does not necessarily have to involve China and ASEAN—at least not directly. More likely, ASEAN could tacitly use surrogates—for instance, the United States and/or India—to politically balance China (Batabyal 2006; Goh 2007–08). By reducing China’s strategy of reassurance and accommodation—and, of course, ‘soft power’—to purely utilitarian calculation and instrumental logic, realist explanations tend to presuppose reassurance as an essentially short to intermediate-term approach, which Beijing will conceivably discard for an aggressive approach once it has acquired material power capabilities commensurate with its deeper (and possibly darker) strategic aspirations.
Without taking anything away from these important insights, this chapter offers a modest proposition that seeks to avoid exclusive treatments of power, on one hand, and reassurance on the other. In this respect, the notion of ‘security seeking’, despite its conceptual problems, seems a useful framework from which to analyse the evolution of China–ASEAN relations, especially because of the concept’s sensitivity to power and reassurance. As part of their efforts to reassure other states about the nature of their intentions, security-seeking states implement a policy of ‘costly signalling’ (Kydd 2005). Costly signalling is the key mechanism that makes reassurance possible through the making of significant gestures by the parties involved that serve to prove to all each other’s trustworthiness. In the context of multilateral regional arrangements that are not defined by a malign hegemony, interstate security cooperation will likely result only if an element of trust is present. It has been argued that states can and do cooperate solely on the basis of self-interest (Oye 1986), although the strength of such utilitarianism-based claims tends to falter especially vis-à-vis Asia, where longstanding cultural enmities and negative historical memories combine with existing security dilemmas to render the pursuit of security cooperation therein difficult. Further, the region’s enduring preoccupation with confidence building—and apparent inability or unwillingness to move towards preventive diplomacy, in the case of the ARF (Garofano 2002)—underscores the significance trust and reassurance have to Asia’s international relations, and specifically China–ASEAN relations.
In this respect, it could be argued that China has done a fair bit of signalling to its Asian neighbours, especially via its concerted ‘charm offensive’, although whether that has been a costly endeavour for China is debatable. [2] To the extent that China’s participation in ASEAN–centred regionalisms is emblematic of strategic restraint on Beijing’s part, it could be said that Chinese assurance has indeed been costly. [3] For its part, ASEAN has also sought to reassure China, chiefly through a longstanding engagement that relies on the ASEAN way. Some of the signals that ASEAN members issued could be construed as potentially costly to their respective national situations, although these could also have been offset by other considerations (Goh 2005, 2007–08).
Getting the People’s Republic in from the revolutionary cold and into the regional fold, as it were, has long been ASEAN’s regional ‘game plan’. The strategy (to the extent it can be so called) has essentially involved extending the ASEAN model of regional security—the ASEAN modus operandi of soft regionalism and process-driven institutionalism—to the wider Asia-Pacific region, and providing great and regional powers a stake in the preservation and promotion of the peace and prosperity of Asia (Indorf 1987; Leifer 1996). ASEAN’s regionalist approach to engaging China has been informed in part by the collective historical experience of the ASEAN member states in engaging post-‘Confrontation’ Indonesia. In this regard, the association’s model of security regionalism can be understood as a historically tried-and-tested strategy that committed New Order Indonesia to the region through an ASEAN framework that not only provided Jakarta a regional leadership role but concomitantly assured recognition of sovereignty and non-interference for the other member nations. In like fashion, the ASEAN model would permit the endorsement of China as a status-quo leader—though not necessarily ahead of America in the power hierarchy—and responsible power/stakeholder in the web of regional institutions and ties within which it is enmeshed (Foot 2006; Goh 2005, 2007–08).
Perhaps more than any other region, South-East Asia has long been susceptible to the influence of and intrusion by the great powers. Although the end of the Cold War brought relative peace and security to South-East Asia, the geopolitical milieu of the region since the early 1990s has been shaped largely by several key developments—namely, American ambivalence regarding its strategic commitments to the region (Acharya and Tan 2006) and the rise of China as an economic, diplomatic and, somewhat less convincingly, military power (Goldstein 2005; Loo 2007; Shambaugh 2002; Swaine and Tellis 2000). A third development is the rise of regionalism in the form of ASEAN. A crucial part of the association’s story has been about facilitating regional ties with external powers as much as it has been about ensuring intraregional stability (Emmers 2003; Goh 2007–08). In this regard, ASEAN regionalism has been shaped by the tension between its internal and external dimensions, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the association’s longstanding efforts to engage China.
It has been argued that the contemporary Asian security order is hegemonic in kind, with China at its epicentre and ASEAN as well as other Asian countries relating to Beijing in suzerain-vassal terms (Kang 2003). Such an interpretation presupposes an effective ‘bandwagoning’, en masse, by Asian states with China—a claim contested by others, who point to efforts by Asian states to balance China or enmesh it within a multilateral web of regional relations and architectures (Acharya 2003–04; Goh 2005, 2007–08). Crucially, if the extant regional security discourse is anything to go by, it is more likely that ASEAN member states, despite their shared acknowledgment and relative ‘acceptance’ of China’s growing power and influence, see China’s rise as a major economic and security concern, and concur on the need for the United States—despite rising anti-Americanism within some South-East Asian societies in recent times (Liow and Tan 2008)—to remain actively involved in Asia and maintain a stable balance of power therein, provided America’s efforts complement and enhance ASEAN’s own initiatives on regional security (Acharya 1996). Thus understood, the association’s engagement of China is essentially provisional in that it involves the integration of China into an ASEAN-defined regional order, one in which the United States plays a leading role. In this respect, while the notion of China as a ‘responsible stakeholder’ of the international system originated with the Americans—former US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, to be exact—it is an orientation with which ASEAN security planners can agree, as long as it coheres with their own regional ideas and praxis.
It is likely that ASEAN’s complex yet provisional engagement of China has had a part to play in facilitating China’s successive permutations from revolutionary regime to normal state to, if only embryonic, responsible great power. This qualified contention does not insist that ontological priority be granted ASEAN as the causal agent of change. Reciprocity played a significant part as both parties learned to accommodate one another. By the 1970s onwards, China had, in fits and starts, volitionally begun its incremental shift away from ideology and towards pragmatism in its conduct in international affairs. This transition has more or less continued throughout the post-Cold War period to the present. In theoretical terms, it could be said that the evolution of Chinese foreign policy through successive political leadership—from that of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaopeng to Jiang Zemin and now Hu Jintao—reflects a China in transition from a quasi-expansionist state, at least in terms of its ideological support for communist movements throughout South-East Asia during the Cold War, to a ‘security seeker’ rather than an ‘offensive realist’ aggrandiser (Li 2004; Tang 2007). Arguably, ASEAN’s ‘China policy’—at times robust and concerted, at other times ambivalent and disjointed—played a relatively significant role in assuaging China’s concerns about perceived risks of its assimilation into the post-Cold War regional order. To be sure, other factors were equally important, not least China’s changing assessment, under Deng’s leadership, that nuclear war with America was not inevitable, and its pragmatic emphasis on national economic development, which essentially denoted a growing reliance on and support for the US-led liberal international economic order (Chen 2008). Indeed, other than occasional hints of bellicosity where cross-straits affairs are concerned, China clearly prizes the stability and prosperity of the region, and to that extent it has largely supported the regional status quo.
In this respect, insofar as ASEAN regionalism has principally been about accommodation rather than exclusion, confidence building rather than the enforcement of rules and reassurance rather than confrontation, it is a brand of regionalism that, at least in rhetoric, resonates positively with Beijing’s own ‘five principles of coexistence’ first articulated at the Asian–African Conference in 1955, and, of considerably more recent vintage, its ‘new security concept’, formally introduced to South-East Asians at an ASEAN meeting in Bandar Seri Begawan in 2002 (Deng and Wang 2005; Tan and Acharya 2008). The ASEAN way of consensus, consultation and non-interference has been celebrated—at least until the region-wide financial crisis of 1997—as a brand of regionalism that works, even though it has also gained notoriety as a poor excuse for a persistent lack of political will among member nations to advance and implement express regional goals (Jones and Smith 2007). Elsewhere it has been branded as chimerical (Nischalke 2000). It is this very model of regional security—a diplomatic approach predicated on accommodation and ‘argumentative persuasion’ (Adler 1997; Antolik 1990; Ba 2006; Checkel 2001; Risse 2000)—that hitherto has arguably succeeded in allaying Chinese suspicions and convincing Beijing of the ostensible value and virtue of ASEAN-based regionalism.
That said, bumps and potholes of all sorts line that road and it remains to be seen how successfully ASEAN and China can negotiate these obstacles as they arise. Further, the ASEAN way is itself evolving—ironically, in response to new challenges confronting the region, not least the rise of China—which could complicate future China–ASEAN ties. In this respect, how the advent of the ASEAN Charter, unveiled in November 2007, and the continuing evolution of the South-East Asian region towards a regional security community could conceivably complicate ASEAN’s engagement strategy are questions of concern not only where the future of China–ASEAN relations is concerned, but the future peace and stability of Asia.
[1] Not all constructivist analysts share this more or less optimistic interpretation—for example, Haacke (2003) and Narine (2004).
[2] It has been implied obliquely that China’s international efforts to win hearts and minds might not have been as successful in South Asia, where Chinese investments have been relatively minimal (Niazi 2005).
[3] On America’s resort to an institutional strategy of strategic restraint after the end of the Cold War, see Ikenberry (2001).