The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen an intensification of China–ASEAN ties that builds on the developments of the previous decade. In 2002, Chinese goodwill led to the signing of the Joint Declaration of ASEAN and China on Cooperation in the Field of Non-traditional Security Issues and the Declaration on the Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the South China Sea. The DOC was not quite a real regional code of conduct, as some ASEAN countries had hoped for, but it constituted a step in the right direction (Buszynski 2003). Both sides agreed at their 2007 bilateral summit to expedite progress towards the establishment of a regional code of conduct. The other crucial development of 2002 was the agreement to establish the China–ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA). The CAFTA deal clearly caught the Japanese off-guard, leading to Tokyo’s attempt to catch up with the Chinese in 2005 by negotiating an ASEAN–Japan Free Trade Area, formally known as the Comprehensive Economic Partnership (Chirathivat 2002; Joint Declaration of the Leaders of ASEAN and Japan on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership, <http://www.aseansec.org/13190.htm>; Tongzon 2005; Wong and Chan 2003). As mentioned earlier, ASEAN and China inked their Strategic Partnership for Peace and Prosperity in 2003.

The evolution of Chinese diplomacy towards the ASEAN region from the 1990s to the present has been something to behold. From an initial distrust of multilateralism to becoming a sophisticated multilateralist, China has successfully transformed itself from past revolutionary pariah to present status-quo power. In the diplomatic–strategic arena, Beijing has advanced, with relative success, the idea that its rise to power is an essentially ‘peaceful’ development that does not threaten others. In the international economic arena, it has supported the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and promoted unilateral and multilateral liberalisation (Sally 2006). As Cornell historian Jian Chen (2008:148–9) has noted, ‘China, in continuing its own course of development, found it necessary to establish an identity that would allow it to appear as an “insider” in the US/West-dominated international system while, at the same time, emphasising its unique contribution to the world’s peace, stability and prosperity.’ Indeed, so careful has China been in downplaying its ascendance that it assiduously avoids any fanfare for its soft-power policy for fear that it could be used by Western quarters as evidence to support the purported existence of a ‘China threat’ (Li 2008:23).

Arguably, to the extent that Chinese reassurance has succeeded in its aims, ASEAN countries today generally regard China ‘as a good neighbour, a constructive partner, a careful listener, and a non-threatening regional power’ (Shambaugh 2004–05:64). To be sure, Chinese circumspection over the inauguration of the East Asia Summit (EAS) in 2005 caused a division of sorts between those in support of the EAS and those who favoured ASEAN+3 as the appropriate regional vehicle to establish the proposed East Asian Community (Kawai and Wignaraja 2007; Malik 2005). There are, however, indications that beyond the rhetoric, Beijing is seriously prepared to countenance the EAS as a possible framework for regional economic integration, notwithstanding its express preference for ASEAN+3. ^[7]

That China has continued its policy of reassurance towards the ASEAN region despite the proclivity of South-East Asian countries to strategically hedge between China and the United States is a good indication of Chinese restraint and appreciation for South-East Asians’ security conundrums and choices. China likewise needs ASEAN to ensure a peaceful environment in order to continue with her modernisation, as well as to ‘prevent any possibility of encirclement to contain her in the future’ (Wanandi 2004). It is unlikely that ASEAN will revise its overall regionalism strategy, whether in South-East Asia for managing intramural relations among ASEAN states, or in the wider Asian region for managing relations with major powers including China. At the intra-South-East Asian level, concerns about the rise of China and India have led ASEAN to take seriously regional institutionalism and community formation, as evidenced by the inauguration of the ASEAN Charter in November 2007 and, as the Vientiane Action Plan would have it, the establishment of the ASEAN Community (with distinct security, economic and socio-cultural facets) by 2020. Failure to render ASEAN more robust, so the logic goes, will incapacitate its ability to deal, competitively as well as cooperatively, with external powers.