China's Multilateral Co-operation in Asia and the Pacific: Institutionalizing Beijing's 'Good Neighbour Policy' (Politics in Asia)

China’s Multilateral Cooperation in Asia and the Pacific

The leaders and bureaucrats of China have actively attended, initiated, promoted or made skillful use of regional multilateral political, economic, and security institutions to accelerate regional cooperation and integration with neighboring states, convince Asian states that China’s rise will not threaten the regional order and their national interests, and exploit its role and diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific as a launch pad for greater influence in world affairs. This book examines why, and to what extent China wishes to promote, accelerate, delay, or overcome constraints to, the institutionalization of these regional organizations. It explores the meaning, scope and repercussion in the drive that a rising China has for institutionalizing multilateral cooperative processes in the Asia-Pacific region, the extent to which its actions are motivated by concerns of politics, economics or security, and the obstacles it faces for so doing. These arrangements have varying effect on the diplomatic postures, economic development, and strategic orientation of countries in Asia and the Western Pacific, and hence the stability and prosperity of the entire region. China’s Multilateral Cooperation in Asia and the Pacific will be of interest to those studying the politics and international relations of China and the Asia-Pacific region. Chien-peng Chung is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science of Lingnan University, Hong Kong.

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China’s Multilateral Cooperation in Asia and the Pacific Institutionalizing Beijing’s “Good Neighbor Policy” Chien-peng Chung

First published 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Chien-peng Chung All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Chung, Chien-Peng. China's Multilateral Cooperation in Asia and the Pacific: Institutionalizing Beijing's “Good Neighbor Policy”/Chien-Peng Chung. p. cm. – (Politics in Asia series) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. China–Relations–Asia. 2. Asia–Relations–China. 3. China– Relations–Pacific Area. 4. Pacific Area–Relations–China. I. Title. JZ1730.A55C48 2010 303.48'25105–dc22 2009044544 ISBN 0-203-85231-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-56914-1 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203- 85231-1 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-56914-9 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-85231-6 (ebk)

For my constant companion and supreme advisor, Hua

Contents

List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgment

xii xiii xv

1

Introduction

2

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy”

13

3

China’s approaches to Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation

27

4

China’s approaches to the ASEAN regional forum

42

5

China’s participation in Shanghai Five and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

55

China’s participation in ASEAN + 3 and ASEAN + China

72

China’s participation in the Four-Party Talks and Six-Party Talks

87

8

China’s venture into the Pacific

98

9

Conclusion

111

Notes Bibliography Index

124 147 159

6 7

1

Illustrations

Figure 8.1

Map of Pacific Islands Forum countries

104

Tables 5.1 6.1 7.1 7.2 8.1

Institutionalization of Shanghai Five vs. Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Meetings and Organs Institutionalization of ASEAN + 3 vs. ASEAN + China: Meetings and Organs Institutionalization of Four-party-talks vs. Six-party-talks: Meetings Institutionalization of Four-party-talks vs. Six-party-talks: Level of meetings and number of sub-committees China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum

63 83 93 93 102

Preface

When China entered the global stage as a serious player, the established actors assigned it a supporting role. But the new actor was too good a performer to remain on the sidelines. It made its way into the limelight and not only joined the act, but changed the allocation of roles and the setting of the stage. John and Doris Naisbitt, authors of China Megatrends

The national leaders and bureaucrats of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have actively attended, initiated, promoted or made skillful use of regional multilateral political, economic, and security institutions like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN + China, Japan, and Korea (ASEAN + 3) / ASEAN + China, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Six-Party Talks (6PT) and the China–Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation (CPIC) Forum, to accelerate regional cooperation and integration with neighboring states, convince Asian states that China’s rise will not threaten the regional order and their national interests, and exploit its role and diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific as a launch pad for greater influence in world affairs. In this sense, the Naisbitts are right. However, few assessments have been made on how China intends to take the lead in institutionalizing regional groupings, what are the factors impeding its push for greater institutionalization of regime architectures, and why it might not want to see some arrangements institutionalized. Although Beijing is clearly the prime mover of the SCO, ASEAN + China and CPIC Forum, and the principal mediator in the 6PT, it seems to have been obstructed from institutionalizing ASEAN + 3 to any extent, and may be regarded as a major obstacle to the structuring of both the APEC and ARF forums. Thus, a major purpose of the book is to detail why and to what extent China wishes to promote, accelerate, retard, or overcome constraints to, the institutionalization of these regional organizations. It will explore the meaning, scope, and repercussion in the drive that a rising China has for institutionalizing multilateral cooperative processes in the Asia-Pacific region, the extent to which its actions are motivated by concerns of politics, economics, or security, and the obstacles it faces for so doing.

xiv

Preface

China’s conduct in constructing multilateral regimes or institutions reflects not only an increasing level of comfort in subscribing to norms of predictable interdependent behavior with other states, but also an aspiration to shape the rules of the game for regional cooperation. As such, although still professing and encouraging adherence to the norms of sovereignty and non-interference in what it considers to be states’ internal affairs, its enthusiasm toward structuring, regularizing, and deepening regional multilateral institutions has been increasing. The PRC’s active participation in regional multilateral arrangements thus reflects its growing attention to, and serves to augment its influence in, its broad Asia-Pacific neighborhood. Initially considered by the United States of America (USA) and other countries as useful vehicles to “socialize” China to liberal capitalist and peaceful norms, respectively, APEC and ARF would prove to be important platforms for China to improve, develop and extend its diplomatic profile, economic relations, and security with countries in the Asia–Pacific. China has since become motivated and confident enough to promote a regional institution from which the USA and its allies are excluded – the SCO, which is a PRC-sponsored group including Russia and Central Asian states to combat terrorism, separatism, and Islamic fundamentalism. The 6PT enables China to play a crucial mediating role in North Korean nuclear disarmament. ASEAN + 3/ ASEAN + China allow the PRC to legitimize and consolidate its diplomatic, economic, and even security presence in Southeast Asia, chiefly in the course of negotiating the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement and South China Sea disputes. Through the CPIC Forum, China is staking a claim to a share of the influence in, and fisheries and other resources from, the Pacific islands, mainly by offering aid. International relations in Asia are undergoing fundamental and irreversible change – a principal cause being the rise of China and its increasing involvement and leadership in regional multilateral institutions. These arrangements, through their structures, member states’ interests and norms, and China’s roles and influence, have varying effect on the diplomatic postures, economic development, and strategic orientation of countries in Asia and the Western Pacific, and hence the stability and prosperity of the entire region. As such, a book on this subject should make for absorbing, or at the minimum interesting, reading. At least this is what the author hopes. C. P. Chung Hong Kong December 2009

Acknowledgment

The author wishes to thank the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange for its generous support in funding in part the research that resulted in the publication of this book. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked please contact the publisher.

1

Introduction

Within the past two decades, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, a major development in international politics has been the formation and development of multilateral arrangements in Asia and the Pacific, with which China’s involvement in regional cooperation and integration is closely associated. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has even been perceived as the main initiator in the institutionalization of several regional multilateral processes in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Pacific Ocean, or at least an active participant. There seems to be little doubt that China has, in the words of a China scholar, “become a born-again regional multilateralist.”1 This book will explore the meaning, scope and implications for neighboring countries of a rising China’s drive for institutionalizing multilateral cooperative processes in the Asia-Pacific region, and the extent to which its actions are motivated by concerns of politics, economics or security. As recently as a dozen years ago, academic conventional wisdom held that PRC officials conducted themselves at multilateral economic and security forums in the East Asia-Western Pacific region in a tepid manner, and opposed efforts at institutionalizing these forums, for fear that giving them structure would constrain the PRC’s own national interests and provide a platform for other state representatives to question its sovereignty claims over Taiwan. Scholars have since perceived that the PRC government, in its conduct of diplomacy, has been moving from a position of staunchly advocating state sovereignty, non-interference, and bilateral relationships with powerful countries to an increasingly keen embrace of cooperative multilateralism, particularly in the regions surrounding China, with the adoption of a “Good Neighbor Policy.”2 Yet, few investigations have been conducted on how China intends to take the lead in institutionalizing some regional groupings, what factors are impeding its push for greater institutionalization of regime architectures, and why it might not want to see other arrangements institutionalized. This book will thus explore the meaning and extent of China’s on-going drive for the institutionalization of regional cooperative processes in the Asia-Pacific region, by positing two main considerations i) whether the major players are well-disposed enough toward China to let it have its way, and ii) the importance of the issues that the specific forum is set up to deal with, particularly to China.

2

Introduction

Although bilateral relations with great powers and interactions with the European Union, the Arab World, Sub-Saharan Africa, North America and Latin America are undeniably important considerations of China’s foreign policy, they are not normally considered to be in the neighborhood of China and subject to the conduct of its “Good Neighbor Policy,” and hence are excluded from the focus of this book.

Objectives and approaches of the book China is the only regional power with meaningful security and comprehensive economic involvements in all five principal sub-regions of Asia and the Pacific – Northeast Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania – which gives it a pivotal role in structuring security and economic cooperation in its surrounding neighborhood. Over the last few years, China has promoted all types of cooperative efforts in Asia and the Pacific regions through regional governmental organizations. This salient development has a definite impact on China’s interests and the interests of neighboring countries, and informs the objectives of the book, which are four-fold: i)

First, we wish to find out why the Chinese government’s perception of regional security and economic multilateral organizations evolved from suspicion, to cautiousness, to supportiveness, roughly coinciding with the respective time periods before 1996, from 1996 to 2000, and after 2000. This is because a major purpose of this project is to track the evolution of the PRC’s courses of action toward promoting regional cooperation with its neighbors, as it progresses across the phases of first tepidity with, then adaptation to, and finally shaping of, the regional economic and security architecture. ii) Next, we will assess the hypothesis that, in terms of the aims, physical structures, written rules, committees created, and regularity of meetings, which collectively determine the degree of institutionalization of a regional organization, China’s interest and success in institutionalizing cooperative regional processes rests on two principal considerations: 1) distribution of power among the forum participants, and whether the major players are friendly toward China or not, and 2) the importance of the issues that the specific forum is set up to deal with, particularly to the political, economic or security interests of China, but also those of other participating states. The postulation is that, if there are few powerful forum state participants, if the major players are friendly to China, and if the issues dealt with by the forum are important to the Chinese leadership, there will be a much greater push for institutionalization by China. The multilateral arrangements to be investigated are the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN + China, Japan and Korea (ASEAN + 3)/ASEAN + China dialogue, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Six-Party Talks (6PT) and the China–Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation (CPIC) Forum.

Introduction

3

iii) From the above findings, we intend to evaluate two popular notions present in contemporary international relations literature regarding Chinese involvement in regional security organizations. It is widely assumed that the government of the PRC, in its conduct of diplomacy at multilateral security forums in the Asia-Pacific region, either opposes efforts at institutionalizing these forums, for fear of undercutting its sovereignty or national interests, or conversely, enthusiastically embraces norms of cooperative multilateralism. The truth could lie somewhere in between. iv) Finally, as most of the multilateral arrangements of interest here are taking on new full or observer members as the years go by, we will also consider the theoretical claim that membership size of a multilateral organization affects the degree of cooperation among its participants. Some scholars in the field of integration studies have speculated that increasing the number of participants in a multilateral institution will lead to a decrease in its effectiveness, with more players pursuing their own agenda within the group, disrupting cooperative norms of behavior already established by the initial players, increasing transaction costs, and complicating the lines of communication.3 As such, this project will also assess through the case studies whether changes in membership size of a multilateral organization will affect the effectiveness of its functioning.

Long-term significance of the study The PRC’s active participation in APEC, ARF, SCO, ASEAN + China, 6PT and the CPIC Forum reflects its growing attention to, and contributes to its increasing influence in, respectively, the broad Asia-Pacific, Western Pacific, Central AsiaEurasia, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and Oceania-South Pacific since the early to mid-1990s. These multilateral arrangements serve to augment the PRC’s political sway, economic roles and security interests in its neighborhood. At the same time, they are also meant to calm regional concerns and reassure neighbors on how China will deploy its rising power and influence. Initially considered by the USA and other countries as a useful vehicle to “socialize” China to liberal capitalist norms, APEC would prove to be an important platform for China to improve and develop its own diplomatic profile and economic relations with countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the USA, meetings of APEC leaders have concerned themselves with some limited aspects of terrorism and non-traditional security, although economics remain the primary focus of the forum. In any case, China’s role in influencing the future structuring of APEC deserves to be examined. The ARF gives China a major voice in the process of conflict management in the broad East Asian–Western Pacific region. The SCO pledges the PRC’s collaboration with post-Soviet Central Asian states and Russia in a Chinese-sponsored grouping to fight separatism, terrorism and Islamic extremism, and in recent years, to promote trade and energy cooperation. ASEAN + 3 / ASEAN + China allow the PRC to legitimize and consolidate its diplomatic, economic and even

4

Introduction

security presence in Southeast Asia, chiefly in the course of negotiating the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement and South China Sea disputes. The 6PT enables China as the host country to play a crucial mediating role in the present row over North Korea’s nuclear disarmament and future unification of the Korean peninsula. Beijing has been involved in constructing a China-centered framework of multilateral arrangements with Pacific island countries within the CPIC Forum. Through the CPIC Forum, China is staking a claim to a share of the influence in, and fisheries and other resources from, the Pacific islands, mainly by offering aid that is unconditional on the domestic political conduct of these countries. The subject of the creation and functioning of cooperative economic and security processes in the Asia-Pacific region have garnered much attention lately. As most of these arrangements involve the PRC, China’s purposes, roles and influence in institutionalizing them have become an issue of much deserved interest, observation and debate. However, the motives and variations in China’s participation in, and support for, regional multilateral institutions have not thus far been researched and studied as thoroughly or systematically as they could have been. This study aims to offer some observations of China’s aims, roles and behavior at certain regional multilateral institutions, to provide convincing explanations for the varying degrees of institutionalization exhibited by APEC, ARF, SCO, ASEAN + 3 / ASEAN + China, 6PT and the CPIC Forum, and to analyze how the PRC’s participation affects, and is affected by, the degree of institutionalization exhibited by these forums. As these regional multilateral arrangements, through their structures, member states’ interests and norms, and China’s roles and influence, have varying effects on the diplomatic postures, economic development, and strategic orientation of countries in East Asia and the Western Pacific, and hence the prosperity and stability of the region, they merit further investigation. China’s conduct in constructing multilateral regimes or institutions reflects not only its increasing level of comfort in subscribing to norms of predictable interdependent behavior among states, as Johnston discovered in his study of the ARF,4 but also an aspiration to shape the rules of the game for regional cooperation.5 So doing also advances China’s national interest and projects its influence by raising its positive profile and dispelling concerns about its growing economic and military strengths.6 As such, although professing and encouraging adherence to the norms of sovereignty and non-interference in what it considers to be states’ internal affairs – China still does not allow the status of Taiwan to be discussed at any of the forums in which it participates – China’s enthusiasm towards structuring, regularizing and deepening regional multilateral institutions has only increased. Yet on a theoretical level, it remains an intellectual mystery as to why the Chinese leadership moved from an attitude of suspicion, to tepidity, to enthusiasm with regards to involvement in regional institution building in less than a decade, from the mid-1990s to the early years of this century. China’s foreign and security policy objectives toward its Asian neighbors, and even the more apparent economic ones, are still unclear. Interviewing officials, intellectuals, business

Introduction

5

people, and journalists, as well as scrutinizing published data, opinion polls, surveys, and reports have revealed to the author how China’s perceptions and opinions toward relations with neighboring countries and regional groupings have been formed and altered since the 1990s. This information has also brought to light perceptions held by China’s neighbors toward China, which would be particularly informative in addressing the constraints on China’s actions in the region. As C. Fred Bergsten, the former head of the Eminent Persons Group of APEC observed, “the new Asian challenge [to the West] will be political and especially institutional.”7 Indeed, international relations in Asia are undergoing fundamental change, and a principal cause is the rise of China and its increasing involvement in regional multilateral institutions. As China becomes more active regionally and internationally, it could mean that America’s unimpeded freedom of action, particularly in the East Asia–Western Pacific region, and also Japan’s influence there, will decline, and other regional powers such as Russia and India might become suspicious of China’s intents. Thus, the issue of how to web China into the global system, by instituting broad and deep political, economic, security, social and cultural ties, should be a major preoccupation by academics engaged in international studies and officials implementing foreign policies today. This book hopes to make some sense out of the new realities presented by China’s regional ascent and engagement, to which China’s neighbors, other Asian nations, the USA and the rest of the world will have to adjust.

State of China’s involvement in Asian and Pacific regional arrangements Apart from China’s rising power and its expanding diplomatic influence, Beijing’s increasing activism in pushing or defending its agenda in regional multilateral institutions in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Pacific, some of which do not involve the USA, has caught the attention of scholars as a key development in Asian affairs and a concern for some countries. It used to be common wisdom that the PRC strongly upheld the discourse of “state sovereignty” and “non-interference in the domestic affairs of states.” Yet this advocacy is no longer deemed to be compromised by its increasing involvement in regional cooperation and even quasi-alliance building, which coincides with the relatively recent formation and development of multilateral arrangements in Asia and the Pacific. These interrelated phenomena are garnering much deserved attention lately. Since 1978, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth has averaged 10 percent per year, external trade volume has grown at a rate of 15 percent per annum, and China is now the second largest foreign direct investment (FDI) recipient in the world, after the USA. Yet, it would be inaccurate to regard China’s interest in regional organizations as a natural consequence of its economic reforms or open-door policy, or for that matter, its leadership’s confidence in its growing weight in international affairs. Rather, this interest was a calculated response to unexpected and changing circumstances.

6

Introduction

Following the Tiananmen Incident in June 1989, China experienced diplomatic, economic and military boycott by Western countries and Japan, but not by the former Soviet Union or post-Communist Russia. Its re-emergence in world and regional affairs was led by establishing diplomatic relations with Indonesia and Singapore in 1990, ending the Japanese boycott in 1991 with a visit from the Prime Minister of Japan, and convincing South Korea and Saudi Arabia to switch official relations from Taiwan to the PRC in 1992. Thus, Beijing recognized the importance of having good relations with Russia and Asian countries in breaking out of foreign policy isolation and expanding its diplomatic space. It began to appreciate that the interest calculations of these countries can be very different from those of the Western powers. China also realized by the mid-1990s that no country or bloc of countries was about to challenge the supremacy of the USA in the world political-economic-military order. Also, given that Washington had shown no signs up till that time of withdrawing its security presence in the East Asia–Western Pacific region, the Chinese leadership decided that it had to engage the region as much as possible to find more friends and hedge against potential US encirclement of China. Between 1997 and 2001, the Chinese government’s perception of regional and particularly security-related multilateral organizations evolved from suspicion, to uncertainty, to supportiveness.8 According to Shambaugh, China’s increasingly positive assessment of regional dialogue groups and organizations principally reflected its growing realization that these institutions were neither intrinsi-cally hostile to China nor were they potential tools of the USA set on constraining it.9 China has in fact come to realize that these groupings wish to engage China in the long term, are open to Chinese perspectives on preserving sovereignty norms while seeking cooperative security in interstate discourse, and may even be of use in balancing US power and influence in China’s neighborhood.10 Diplomats from the Department of Asian Affairs of the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs who attended various international forums began convincing their bureaucrat superiors and national leaders that China’s cooperation in multilateral settings helps reassure others of its best intentions and avert hostile reactions to its growing power.11 In an intense series of briefings to then-President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Secretary-General Jiang Zemin between 1998 and 1999, foreign policy advisors argued before him, apparently successfully, that China should not focus principally on relations with the USA to promote Chinese interests in the Asia-Pacific region, but should instead pursue an omni-directional foreign policy that is multilayered (both bilateral and multilateral) and involves stable and cooperative relations with large regional countries like Japan.12 By 2000, Chinese international affairs experts had concluded, with the concurrence of the national leadership, that, to secure a peaceful environment conducive to domestic political stability and economic development, China needed to be more proactive in shaping its regional environment. The “accidental” bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade by US warplanes in May 1999 in the war with Serbia and the emergency landing of an

Introduction

7

American EP3 “spy plane” on China’s Hainan province in April 2001 after a mid-air collision with a Chinese warplane turned a large segment of the Chinese elite and public opinion against the USA, from which China-USA relations never fully recovered to the time of US President Bill Clinton’s visit to China in May 1998. It was around that time that Jiang visited Japan, in November 1998, determined to ask for a written apology from the Japanese government for its wartime atrocities in China, failing which he then pressed his case at every meeting, to the extent of creating a public backlash in Japan.13 After an internal policy review, China started to mend fences with Japan, by proposing threeway consultations between China, Japan and South Korea on economic issues, which took place in November 1999 in the background of the ASEAN + 3 summit, and dispatching Prime Minister Zhu Rongji to Japan in October 2000, who publicly thanked his hosts for economic assistance while making very few references to history.14 In the aftermath of the US and Japan episodes, China turned its primary attention back from the other side of the Pacific Ocean and gave the highest priority to relations with its Asian neighbors, as its leadership promised to pursue a “Good Neighbor Policy” through “consultations, negotiations, and seeking common ground while reserving differences.”15 Overcoming habitual sensitivities regarding perceived interference in China’s domestic governance, concern over having its sovereignty claims over Taiwan being openly questioned, and wariness that some foreign countries may obstruct China’s agenda in multilateral forums, Chinese leaders have since Jiang Zemin perceived that China should discharge its duties in regional affairs and international society as an emerging and responsible great nation commensurate with its status and influence as a rising power with one-fifth of the world’s population.16 More than anything else, this understanding led to China’s late, but full-blown, participation in a plethora of regional multilateral organizations by the time Hu Jintao became CCP Secretary-General in late 2002. China’s leaders have given multilateral cooperation a prominent place in its current national security doctrine – the New Security Concept, which envisages the development of a virtuous cycle of mutual security through cooperative means – especially since China’s leaders like Jiang and Hu have understood national security in a trans-national and comprehensive sense. China has since successfully tied its political, economic and security interests and international standing to its promotion and institutionalization of multilateral cooperative organizations. To convince Asian states that China’s rise will not threaten the regional order and their national interests, and to use its role and diplomacy in Asia as a launch pad for greater influence in world affairs, Chinese leaders and officials have actively initiated, promoted or made skillful use of regional multilateral political and security institutions like APEC, ARF, ASEAN + 3 / ASEAN + China,17 SCO, and 6PT, where PRC officials regularly attend summits and conferences, to accelerate regional cooperation and integration with neighboring states.18 Except for APEC, of which China was not a founding member, it is conceivable that most, if not all, of these organizations would not even have existed without China’s push or participation.

8

Introduction

As part of Asia-Pacific integration, China is playing the role of the leading state in the process of institutionalizing the SCO, ASEAN + China, and CPIC Forum, or that of the principal mediator in the 6PT, with the respective support or at least acquiescence of Russia, ASEAN, Japan, and the USA. However, China seems to have been obstructed from institutionalizing ASEAN + 3 to any extent, and its primary role in APEC and the ARF seems to be acting the part of a major constraining and constrained force. Thus, China’s different roles and positions in different regional arrangements require some explanation. The study of regime formation and maturation is well-developed in the case of European integration,19 but with very few exceptions,20 this is far less so with Asia and the Pacific. Although the European Union (EU) is not, and should not be, taken as the standard for the path of formal structuralism, it is a classic, well-developed and stably evolving model against which Asia-Pacific attempts at developing effective and cohesive formal institutions can be fruitfully compared, specifically taking into account China’s role in these efforts. Although the trend of recent studies has divorced itself somewhat from the traditional and almost exclusive approach of seeing Asian regional integration from the perspectives of the roles and interests of Japan’s bureaucrats and businessmen,21 and the author himself has conducted research on the establishment, development and institutionalization of Asian and Pacific regional organizations,22 there is certainly no study that he is aware of that deals with all the institutions described above in the context of the theories and practices of Chinese foreign policy and its approaches to regional integration. This book attempts to fill some of the gaps. The author chose to concentrate on Track I (intergovernmental) institutions rather than Track II (non-governmental) mechanisms to focus study on the important role of governments in effecting regional cooperation and integration. In any case, the effects of Track II participants on official policy-making are not clearly documented at present. The author does not and would not claim that China alone is able to constitute or institutionalize a regional establishment, but it is clearly a prime moving force in four such arrangements (SCO, ASEAN + 3, ASEAN + China and CPIC Forum), although it may also be regarded as a major obstacle to the structuring of other forums (ARF and APEC). The author feels that published studies of regional organizations in Asia and the Pacific have not approached the subject from China’s motives or tried to put China’s institutional craftsmanship at the center of investigation. Hence, a major purpose of the book is to find out why and to what extent China wishes to promote, accelerate or retard the institutionalization of regional organizations, with regard to its own interests and the image it wants to project.

Why does institutionalization of regional arrangements matter? The processes of structuralizing APEC, ARF, 6PT, SCO, ASEAN + 3 / ASEAN + China and the CPIC Forum, and the obstacles faced in their development and institutionalization, show the extent and variation of China’s push for institutionalization

Introduction

9

of regional processes in terms of both power politics and shared interests, that is i) distribution of power and intent among forum participants, and ii) the importance of the issues dealt with by the specific forum. To the extent that China is pushing for the institutionalization of regional multilateral processes, the distribution of power among the forum participants and disposition of the major players toward China demonstrate China’s influence relative to the other members, and the importance of the issues that the specific forum is set up to deal with reveals the relevance and saliency of China’s proposals to itself and participating countries. Examining whether China is able to transcend constraints and achieve its institutionalization objectives is a major part of this project. A regional organization of states is a multilateral regime, which according to Ruggie, refers to a set of mutual expectations, rules and regulations, organization plans, efforts and commitments that have been accepted by a group of state governments.23 When national objectives cannot be achieved, or cannot be achieved satisfactorily, either unilaterally or through bilateral arrangements, states turn to collective arrangements such as multilateral regimes. As multilateral arrangements serve to encourage cooperation among states with shared interests, establish expected patterns of behavior, and reduce transaction and search costs,24 their institutionalization matters for the study of regional organizations and China’s role in them because it gives us a starting point from which to examine policy issues and processes, helps us to identify the roles, interests and norms of the actors involved, assists us in understanding how these actors together determine the shape and speed of regional integration, and finally, allows us to speculate on the future of the institution and the region.25 Institutionalization usually involves specifying functional goals, creating a number of behavioral norms, progressing to formal rules, and extending the process to include concrete entities like permanent committees, staffs, budgets, and internal procedures that can shape policies or norms. Among others, Huntington has devised several criteria for measuring political institutionalization in an organization,26 positing that the level of institutionalization is higher i) the longer an organization has been in existence, ii) the more changes that an organization has survived in its principal functions, iii) the more complex an organization is, in terms of the hierarchical and functional multiplication of its sub-units, and iv) the more autonomous an organization’s political forms are from being mere expressions of the interests of a particular individual, clan or social group. The above dimensions, all tracking and demonstrating the evolution and standardization of processes and procedures,27 are yardsticks against which China’s achievements in institutionalizing regimes, which will enable it to perpetuate its own roles and influence in them and in the Asian region, are to be appraised, and any alterations in the current pattern of institutionalization can be predicted. Some analysts see China’s cultivation of regional groupings as a hedge against prospective containment by the West, which many people in China feel, is against its rise to global power status. Goldstein wondered if China’s multilateral diplomacy is a carefully cultivated effort to advance its national interests by “reassuring those who might collaborate against a putative China threat,” or whether it reflects

10

Introduction

a genuine conversion from instrumentalist reasoning to cooperative definitions of security socialized by the experience of participating in multilateral organizations.28 However, Shirk noted that real-politik pursuit of national interest does not preclude an idealist commitment to the values of multilateralism, as with the USA after the Second World War, in creating multilateral global institutions and submitting to their authority.29 Although China is far less suspicious of multilateral arrangements at the end of 2009 than even 10 years before, its comfort level for participating in regional institutions, and hence its behavior in these organizations, probably still depends very much on its ability to maximize its relative power, interest, and autonomy within these bodies. In the context of the measurements of institutionalization described above, China’s divergent roles in two regional security organizations – the wellinstitutionalized SCO and the under-institutionalized ARF – will be highlighted. SCO members are generally trustful of the PRC, have overall good relations with it, and share many security objectives, concerns and norms with China and one another. Hence, they are prepared to let the PRC set the agenda, direction and speed of the SCO. Member states of the ARF are less trustful of the PRC, have mixed relations with it, and share few security objectives, concerns and norms with China or one another. Whereas the ARF has been seen by the West as a tool to “socialize” China into the international community by reducing its perception of threat from the outside world, the PRC has perceived the ARF as a vehicle for promoting “multipolarity” to diffuse America’s “hegemonic” status in the AsiaPacific. Moreover, whereas the SCO represents priority multilateral foreign and security policy interests for the PRC, Russia and the other member states, the ARF represents a secondary or fall-back position for the bilateral-first foreign and security policy relations of Japan, USA and the PRC, while ASEAN already constitutes a bloc within the forum. Similarly contrasting but to a lesser extent for the PRC’s involvement, the ASEAN + China forum occupies a higher level of foreign and economic policy interests and priority for China than ASEAN + 3, where it shares leadership with Japan, and the ASEAN + China is consequently a forum that Beijing has sought to actively structure. As to APEC, although cooperation by member economies on taking joint measures in preventing money laundering by terrorists, exchanging intelligence on criminals, and ensuring food safety, travelers’ protection and other forms of non-traditional security have been regularly discussed at APEC summits since the September 11, 2001 attacks, in accord with the wishes of China and most Asian countries, the main aim of the forum is still to promote trade, investment and economic cooperation, and its resolutions are still non-binding. East Asian regionalism has been criticized by many observers for lacking a country that is ready and able to play a leadership role in overriding structural difficulties and resolving differences of opinion in integrating the region. We posit that China is apparently willing and able to bear the cost of leading the drive for greater institutionalization in Asian regional organizations because, as compared to reaping the benefits of raising its international status and securing a

Introduction

11

peaceful and stable external environment for its economic flows, the price of leadership, such as hosting the 6PTs, reducing or eliminating tariffs for agricultural imports from the poorer Southeast Asian countries, budgeting for an SCO secretariat staff, or giving aid to Pacific island countries is quite low and can be kept relatively well-hidden for a large and authoritarian country. In addition, the extent to which the principle of non-interference in the affairs of neighboring states is held by China, unless decided otherwise by the United Nations Security Council where the PRC has a permanent seat and veto, means that pursuing cooperative security and functional interdependence with Beijing could pose very little political risk to other states in Asia and the Pacific. Multilateral regional institutions are an arena not only for the preservation and expansion of a major participant’s own interests, influence and norms within a region of the world, but they are also assemblies for the contestation and exclusion of the interests, influence and norms of other states, and for thwarting the designs of other states to reduce or limit one’s own interests, influence and operation of norms. To place the book in a neutral perspective, the roles of other state actors beside China in these regional arrangements will be carefully examined; particularly should they adopt positions that might serve as checks on Chinese interests, influence and behavior in these multilateral forums. The attitude and role of important players like the USA in the 6PT, Russia in the SCO and Japan on ASEAN-centered forums will be emphasized. Japan in particular, as it has the biggest economy in China’s neighborhood and arguably the strongest conventional military force in Asia, could serve as an effective constraint on China’s ambitions and institutionalization efforts, particularly in the ARF, ASEAN + 3 and Pacific Island Forum, where the Japanese are heavily involved, but also in the 6PT and SCO if it becomes more active in these arrangements in terms of diplomacy, financial assistance, and technological transfer. How China responds to the opportunities for partnership or challenges to its involvement provided by the presence of other major powers in these multilateral forums will determine how long and how well it can project its power, uphold its benefits, or frustrate any “constrainment” designs on its role and influence in its neighborhood regions. As states’ behavior and interest calculations in regional organizations that are structured to some degree are usually more than, and different from, the sum of their bilateral relations, it would be interesting to know under what foreign, economic or security policy circumstances China would want to perpetuate or augment its benefits in regional multilateral arrangements, under what other conditions would it take to reduce or suspend participation, and how China’s actions are affecting the behavior of other states in these mechanisms and how it, in turn, is affected by them. Hence, not only does it matter to neighboring states and peoples to what extent China gets involved in regional organizations, knowing the degree to which they are institutionalized is also very important. China’s efforts to institute, or help with other state participants in the structuring of, regional multilateral arrangements are situated in a larger strategic

12

Introduction

perspective that Chinese leaders have of their country’s place and role in the broader adjacent regions of the world. In line with this prospect, China’s leadership has made attempts to formulate and conduct a regional “Good Neighbor Policy,” beginning with the founding of the PRC in 1949. The reasons for, measures on, and results of, its attempts at institutionalizing various regional groupings under this policy will be elaborated on in the following chapters.

2

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy”

No major foreign policy initiatives or changes were carried out at the Chinese Communist Party’s Seventeenth National Congress in October 2007 or the first session of the People’s Republic of China’s 11th National People’s Congress in March 2008. This was unsurprising, as they occurred around the mid-term of the tenure of China’s current Hu Jintao–Wen Jiabao leadership. Yet, as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) celebrates October 1, 2009, the sixtieth anniversary of its founding, China’s rising diplomatic, economic, and strategic profile in the world means that closer attention should be paid to the continuities and adjustments in the formulation and conduct of its foreign policy, as they will have a definite effect on the international community, particularly countries in China’s neighborhood of Southeast Asia, Russia-Central Asia, Northeast Asia, and South Asia.

The origin and development of China’s “Good Neighbor Policy” (1949–1989) A comprehensive approach by the PRC to pursuing better relations with neighboring states in the Asia and Pacific regions, even before it was labeled as the “Good Neighbor Policy” (“Mulin Youhao Zhengce”), has always been considered by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as part of an external strategy under its direction in the service of the state that it created. In 1949, as a result of the CCP’s communist ideological inclinations and the USA’s support for the defeated Chiang Kaishek regime, Chairman Mao Zedong adopted a foreign policy of “leaning to one side,” the side of the socialist camp under the USSR.1 Even so, in regards to relations with its neighbors, China proposed the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” and wrote it into the joint communiqués concluding the visits to China of India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Burma’s Prime Minister U Nu, both in 1954.2 The five principles were stated by Premier Zhou Enlai at the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference at Bandung the following year as i) respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, ii) mutual non-interference in domestic governance, iii) mutual non-aggression, iv) equal benefits, and v) peaceful co-existence.

14

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy”

With the total collapse of Sino-Soviet friendship by the early 1960s, Mao stated in 1964 that Asia, Europe, and Africa, together with oppressed nationalities everywhere that were waiting to be liberated, constituted a “Middle Belt” (zhongjian didai) between the socialist and capitalist blocs,3 which by inference, would include China, South Asia and Southeast Asia. Hence the logic was that, as true Marxists, the Chinese should help the developing world, particularly China’s neighbors, break free from the “puppet regimes” foisted on them by American “imperialists” and Soviet “revisionists.” With the death of Mao and the end of the “Cultural Revolution” in late 1976, the Chinese authorities soon ceased providing training, moral support, and material assistance to communist revolutionary movements in Asia and elsewhere, particularly in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma, and India, and clearly expressed their desire not to interfere in the domestic governance of other states. Since the policy of reform and opening was carried out by the Chinese leadership under Deng Xiaoping in late 1978, the comprehensive aim of China’s external strategy as understood by Chinese academics may be summarized as “stabilizing the surrounding, anchoring the Asia-Pacific, and approaching the world.” If so, pursuing stable relationships with China’s surrounding neighbors has become a necessary strategy for China’s economic development, to attract foreign trade and investment. This has been all the more so in the last 20 years with the rapid erosion of any form of ideological moorings for the Chinese partystate, such that economic growth to increase the material welfare of the people has become the main legitimizing basis for the popular acceptance of, or at least acquiescence in, CCP rule. As China’s economic, diplomatic, cultural, and even military influence will be realized and felt first and foremost in the surrounding Asian and Pacific countries, it is also important to China that they do not become its enemies.

China’s early post-Cold War (multipolar) foreign policy strategy (1990–1996) According to Deng Xiaoping’s analysis in May 1984, “The two major questions in the contemporary world are that of peace and development. … To obtain peace one must oppose hegemonism. … While developed countries are getting wealthier, developing countries are getting poorer. If this North-South problem is not addressed, world economic development will face many obstacles.”4 With the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, it was apparent that the USA, Japan and Western European countries desired to create a “New World Order,” in the words of then-US President George Bush,5 based on Western capitalist and democratic forms and values, to be applied to the rest of the countries in the world. China, in the aftermath of the June 1989 Tiananmen incident, was enduring diplomatic isolation and economic embargo from major Western countries and Japan. In response, Deng laid down two main post-Cold War foreign policy paths for China in March 1990, namely, pursuing anti-hegemonism, and establishing a new multipolar international order of politics and economics.6 Deng encapsulated

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy” 15 these two policy prescriptions into the foreign policy principle of “Tao Guang Yang Hui, You Suo Zuo Wei,” meaning that China should “keep a low profile and bide its time, while getting something accomplished.”7 “Tao Guang Yang Hui” may be understood as a strategy of active defense of China’s interest, meaning that China should first and foremost mind its own business and be neither a leader nor a challenger, but rather a participant or co-builder of a “New International Order.” This approach to interstate political and economic relations remains the lodestar of Chinese foreign policy today. By championing multipolarity as the future development of world politics and global economics, particularly on important occasions such as the Fourteenth CCP Congress in October 1992 and “the Sino-Russian Joint Communiqué” in April 1996, China hoped to unite major forces in thwarting what it saw as US “hegemonic” attempts to constrain China diplomatically and strategically, with support from Japan. When China joined the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 1991 and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1994, it did so defensively, to make sure that important issues pertaining to economic and security matters in the Asia-Pacific region could not be decided without its participation. In time, however, China would discover that multilateral arrangements such as these constitute useful platforms to make its presence felt. Aside from having to deal with the adverse consequences of the Tiananmen incident, a major consideration of China’s early post-Cold War foreign policy was also to counter the “China Threat Theory,” in general, and perceived Chinese bullying of Southeast Asian claimants to the disputed South China Sea/Spratly islands by conducting naval patrols in that area. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei contest the ownership of these islands in whole or in part with one another and with China and Taiwan. The Chinese leadership was also concerned about what it perceived to be expanding Japanese security influence in Southeast Asia, when the first country to which Japan dispatched its Self-Defense Force after its Diet passed the Peacekeeping Operations bill in June 1992 was Cambodia, although the purpose was to supervise, under United Nations (UN) command, an election it organized. As a first step to having good relations with all countries in the Asia-Pacific region, China re-established diplomatic ties with Indonesia and Vietnam in 1990 and 1991, respectively, and established official relations with Singapore, Brunei, and South Korea between 1990 and 1992. China received Japan’s Prime Minister in 1991, signifying the end of the Japanese boycott, and hosted its Emperor the following year. However, in the aftermath of an encounter between Chinese and Filipino warships off the disputed Mischief Reef in February 1995, China’s action was unanimously condemned by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in an ARF meeting in Brunei later that year. Singapore’s Senior Statesman, Lee Kuan Yew, although stating that he was against the “China Threat Theory” and an ethnic Chinese himself, warned that “we should expect that once a country becomes wealthy, it would want to have everything.”8 If Lee’s remarks reflected anything close to the thinking of Southeast Asian leaders, then China had a potential problem in its relations with the region, which it would want to diffuse.

16

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy”

As early as 1993, then-Chinese Premier Li Peng noted in his government’s annual work report that “active development of beneficial and friendly relations with neighboring states, in striving for a peaceful and tranquil surrounding environment, is an important aspect of our country’s foreign affairs work.”9 This statement might have established the foundation of China’s current “Good Neighbor Policy,” but it took unfavorable Southeast Asian reactions to the Mischief Reef incident to spur the Chinese leaders into action.

China’s proposal on establishing a new international order (1997–2002) Deng’s three foreign policy tenets for Chinese foreign policy, as enunciated in May 1984 and March 1990, were confirmed by the Jiang Zemin leadership at the Fifteenth CCP Congress in October 1997 and reaffirmed at the Central Economic Work Conference in late 1999, which still saw peace and development as the major problems of the day, multipolarity as an emerging world phenomenon, and a warming trend in international relations.10 These points were reiterated in the report of the latest Seventeenth CCP Congress in October 2007, confirming their current relevance. Further directions for the conduct of foreign policy under Jiang were provided for under the rubric of a “New International Order.”

New International Order = democratization of international relations As enunciated by Jiang, the basic tenets of this New International Order are i) respect for state sovereignty and different political, economic, and cultural orientation of nations, meaning non-interference in the domestic politics of states, ii) shelving differences and finding common grounds for cooperation, iii) resolution of disagreements through peaceful means, and iv) promoting multipolarity in the international system. Jiang also called for the democratization of international relations, by which Chinese leaders mean first and foremost that domestic politics should be left to a country’s people and government to decide, and that international affairs should be decided by all states in the world peacefully through dialogue and negotiations. Democratization of international relations to Jiang also means relying on the legitimacy and authority of the aims and principles of the UN Charter and that of international law for the conduct of interstate relations, such that different cultures, socio-political systems, and development paths can co-exist in a peaceful and organized manner,11 and China can play open, legitimate, authoritative, and extensive roles in world affairs. Unlike in the early post-Cold War years, the call for multipolarity no longer implies an anti-American impulse, although in practice the realization of such a situation would ideally weaken America’s supposed hegemonic position in the international system hierarchy. The Chinese leadership has recognized that its desired multipolar state of affairs would be realized only in the long term, but

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy” 17 believes that having good relations with neighboring states, and persuading them to join regional cooperative organizations where China has a strong presence, will draw them away from unquestioning acceptance of US leadership and forestall any joint attempt at constraining China.

New International Order + New Security Concept = “Five Principles Of Peaceful Co-existence” China’s leaders have come to realize that, since its economy has become increasingly tied to the world economy, national, regional and international security are also becoming increasingly interrelated, and so are military, economic and human aspects of security within the state. As such, aside from defending China’s national boundaries, Beijing understood that it would have to work with other governments to combat cross-border “non-traditional security threats,” such as terrorism, environmental degradation, trans-national crime, and infectious diseases. This is the basis of China’s comprehensive “New Security Concept,” which made its first appearance in the Chinese Defense White Paper of 1998. Regarding security, it is notable that, while both the reports of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth CCP Congresses mentioned that China would not form alliances with either states or interstate groupings, or join in any military collective, this statement was dropped from both the reports of the Sixteenth and most recent Seventeenth CCP Congresses. This means that the “New Security Concept” might be interpreted broadly in future by China’s leadership, in allowing for deployment of its troops in neighboring and foreign countries not just as part of a UN peacekeeping contingent, subject, of course, to the invitation of the host governments. China’s government is careful to rest the arguments supporting both the “New International Order” and “New Security Concept” on the “Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence,” first propounded by the Chinese leadership in the 1950s and resurrected by Deng in 1988 as a uniquely Asian way of conducting interstate relations.12 The key principle in the “Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence” is that of non-interference in the domestic politics of other states, supposedly in respecting the choices made by the peoples of those states. A major purpose of adopting this principle is to ease lingering fear and suspicion among neighboring countries of China’s rise and development. Another important purpose is to gain the moral high ground over the USA, which has taken pre-emptive military action to remove regimes unfriendly to it.

Prioritizing regionalism and internationalism There has been a re-orientation of Chinese diplomacy from bilateral relations with great powers as a foreign policy priority, particularly toward the USA, to attaching similar importance to neighboring states. There was no definite turning point in this orientation but rather a turning phase, which lasted from the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis in mid-1997 through the US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 to the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation

18

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy”

Organization in mid-2001. By the late 1990s, the Chinese had recognized that the intertwining of international trade and financial flows has made the world one of complex interdependence. Ensuring stability of regional and international trade, financial and investment environment and security of global energy supplies have thus meant that China’s interests, and, consequently its influence, must expand beyond what bilateral relations with powerful states alone can deal with as much as possible without harming these sets of relationships. To increase common interests, raise mutual trust and reduce regional threat perceptions of China, Beijing began publicly and officially advocating a policy of “neighborliness, trustworthiness and partnership” with neighboring countries in Asia and the Pacific in the report of the Sixteenth CCP Congress in 2002.13 Apart from China’s rising power and expanding diplomatic influence, its increasing activism in regional multilateral institutions, some of which do not involve the USA, is recognized as a key development in Asian affairs. That report not only called for China’s active involvement in multilateral foreign affairs activities, particularly in the UN and other international and regional organizations, but also its attention to collective security arrangements. It also noted that “multipolarity and economic globalization are inexorable developments that would provide the world with favorable opportunities and conditions for peace and development.” However, it recognized that constructing a new international order is a lengthy process, and that anti-terrorism should be conducted by states only within the rubric of the UN Charter and international law for such behavior to be legitimate. In other words, unilateral military “pre-emption” on the part of state governments, of which China may be a future target, should be ruled out.

China’s foreign policy under its “Peaceful Rise/Peaceful Development” thesis (since 2002) Continuity in Chinese foreign policy formulation is the key concept in the report of the Seventeenth CCP Congress, which is almost identical in meaning with the report of the previous congress on foreign policy, in encapsulating the basic tenets of the “New International Order,” “New Security Concept,” and “Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence.” Yet, notwithstanding this underlying continuity, the sense is now palpable that, coinciding with Chinese perceptions of the “renaissance,” “peaceful rise,” or “peaceful development” of their own national strength and culture, an image-consciousness of being, or having to be, a “responsible great power” and full player in the international arena has largely replaced their previous “victim-hood” sentiments of long duration. The current set of Chinese leaders have recognized that, although the world may not yet be considered truly multipolar, especially in the military or strategic sense of the word, the Asia-Pacific region has been moving in the direction of multipolarity. In this sense, it is no longer possible for one or two states or ideological camps to hold sway over the entire region, particularly as the role and influence of the USA seemed to the Chinese to have declined vis-à-vis the other regional powers, especially in terms of economic and financial muscle.

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy” 19 The PRC leadership also feels that the presence of the USA, Russia, China, Japan, the ASEAN, Australia, and India has created a balance of forces in the Asia-Pacific region, which is conducive to the maintenance of peace and stability of the surrounding environment for China as never before. On its part, China considers itself a major, if not the main, pillar of stability and development in the Asia-Pacific. As such, China’s leaders believe that it is contributing to the multipolarity, peace and prosperity of the region, particularly in pushing for greater involvement in, and integration of, regional governmental arrangements, through its “Good Neighbor Policy” in Asia and the Pacific.

Good Neighbors as a strategic opportunity for China to lock-in its interests and influence in the Asia-Pacific region A major endeavor for Chinese foreign policy is to obtain for China a peaceful and secure surrounding environment for its economic and military modernization. A domestic “Harmonious Society,” as enunciated by the current Hu Jintao leadership, obviously requires a “Harmonious World,” and vice versa. First pronounced by Hu at the Afro-Asian Summit in Jakarta in April 2005 and reiterated on many occasions since then, to realize a “Harmonious World” means that, first and foremost, relations with neighboring states must be developed or improved, and that China must get actively involved in Asian and Pacific affairs. Pursuing a “Harmonious World” would provide a means for the Chinese leadership to augment its own interests and image by indicating its desire to move beyond the traditional foreign policy conception of the “Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence,” to taking the initiative in promoting cooperation to reduce tension, reconciling differences to increase understanding, taking steps to narrow the North-South economic gap, and undertaking environmentally friendly policies. The catchphrase of realizing a “Harmonious World” aside, the salient basis of China’s Good Neighbor Policy remains point i) of its “New International Order” and points i) and ii) of its “Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence.” The Chinese government knows that the related doctrines of sovereignty and noninterference are shared by many of its neighbors, particularly in Central and Southeast Asia, most of which are post-Soviet or post-colonial creations that jealously guard their newly acquired sovereignty and are often criticized by the West (chiefly the USA but also Western European governments) for being less than full representative democracies.

Good neighbors as propitious prospects for regional integration The need to “strengthen regional cooperation and push interaction and cooperation with neighboring states to a new horizon” (italics added) was written into the report of the Sixteenth CCP Congress,14 when the Hu leadership first took power at the end of 2002. This implies that China was by then already aiming for the realization of economic and even military integration of China-centered regional

20

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy”

groupings through interstate cooperation. In particular, a principal two-prong strategy of China’s Good Neighbor Policy is to actively push for the comprehensive development of all possible aspects of cooperation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and ASEAN + China partnership arrangement, as models of Beijing’s multilateral foreign relations to realize an interdependent but multipolar world with a diminished US hegemony. China’s involvement in regional arrangements and interest in institutionalizing them demonstrate its high comfort level in interacting with like-minded neighboring countries and desire to cement a web of multilateral relations with them. The SCO has a secretariat, anti-terrorism structure, charter, Council of National Coordinators, and annual meetings of councils of Heads of States, Heads of Government, and full ministers. The ASEAN + China mechanism has its annual Heads of State or Government meetings, as well as various committees to coordinate cooperation at the senior official level. The irregular Six-Party Talks (6PT) hosted by China at the Vice-Ministerial level are not as well-institutionalized, but there are already a series of formal and informal meetings and the formation of several working groups to work out issues of common concerns among representatives from participating states. The important working group on nuclear disarmament is chaired by a Chinese official.

Good neighbors as partners in a “common development” enterprise China’s pursuit of “amicable, peaceful and prosperous neighbors” (“mulin, anlin, fulin”) through promoting border stabilization, closer relationships, confidence building and mutual trust with its neighboring states, as enunciated by Premier Wen Jiabao in Indonesia at the 2003 ASEAN Commercial and Investment Summit, was a pithy summing-up of its Good Neighbor Policy until then. During the Asian Financial Crisis from 1997 to 2000, by announcing that China would not devalue its currency, and providing more than US$4 billion to stabilize the currencies of affected countries, the Chinese leadership won praise from, furthered trust with, and greatly boosted its standing among, the countries of ASEAN.15 With Japan in a severe recession from 1991 to 2004, the collapse of its “flying geese” model of economic development, and the Asian financial crisis that retarded the growth of many Asian economies, China had emerged by 2000, in addition to being an export platform, as a major market for the products of countries in Asia and the Pacific and the engine of their economic growth. Unsurprisingly, China has in recent years become a model for economic development based on authoritarian “Asian” values. To complement the implementation of the strategies of the “Great Development of the Western Regions” (xibu dakaifa) and “Going-Out” (zouchuqu), the Chinese government has actively encouraged state-owned, collective and public enterprises to open up international markets, particularly Central Asian and Asian-Pacific ones, for Chinese trade and investment. As such, cultivating ASEAN and SCO countries, and lately India, as economic partners is part of a deliberate strategy

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy” 21 for China to open up new markets for itself while reducing its traditional dependence on the USA, EU and Japan. By 2003, neighboring countries had constituted more than 60 percent of China’s foreign trade and 70 percent of its inbound investments.16 By the end of 2005, 67 percent of Chinese imports came from Asia, and it was to this region that 80 percent of all investments by Chinese enterprises went.17 With the serious world-wide economic recession that started in the USA in mid-2008, the Chinese hope that these additional outlets can provide more sales avenues for their businesses.

China’s Good Neighbor Policy and Southeast Asia A major purpose of pursuing a Good Neighbor Policy with Southeast Asian countries was not only to cultivate them as sources of raw material and investment, but also to thwart attempts by Taiwan’s government to buy diplomatic support and visiting rights for its leaders through encouraging Taiwanese firms to invest in Southeast Asia. With rapidly rising trade and investment between China and ASEAN countries, the latter is now much less of a concern for the PRC leadership than before. Although China first engaged ASEAN as a group to coordinate their diplomatic postures at the annual meetings of the UN against Vietnam after its incursion into Cambodia in late 1978, China’s formalized interaction with ASEAN could really be dated from July 1991, when its Foreign Minister was invited as a guest of host Malaysia at the ASEAN Annual Ministerial Meeting (AMM) in Kuala Lumpur. From the 1992 to the 1995 AMMs, China was the guest of the current Chair of ASEAN. In 1996, China became a dialogue partner of ASEAN. In 1997, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and ASEAN leaders met to inaugurate the first ASEAN + 3 (ASEAN plus China, Japan, and South Korea) meeting. Within the rubric of ASEAN + 3 meetings, ASEAN + China meetings would become a regular event at the annual ASEAN leaders’ summit. Having the ASEAN + 3 meetings is in fact a diplomatic victory for China. The Japanese Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro initially proposed a regular set of Japan-ASEAN summit meetings, but ASEAN leaders decided to include their counterparts from China and South Korea as well in joint summits.18 China then began to discuss in earnest prospects for the joint development of the so-called Greater Mekong Sub-region with the adjacent countries of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, particularly in the areas of water sharing, ecological preservation, human resources training, development of transportation links, and interdiction of cross-border human trafficking. At the 2001 ASEAN + China meeting, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji suggested the creation of a China–ASEAN Free Trade Area, which was signed into an agreement the following year to realize this proposal in 10 years. China subsequently undertook to extend a preferential tariff to the agricultural imports from the poorer ASEAN states of Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar without reciprocity for five years. In 2000, China signed its first bilateral maritime boundary agreement with another country by doing so with Vietnam, signaling its resolve to do so with other countries with which it has maritime territorial disputes. Following that, in

22

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy”

2002, China signed a “Declaration of Conduct in the South China Sea” with ASEAN to demonstrate their resolve to settle their territorial claims using peaceful means, in line with a basic tenet of China’s “New International Order”. As the first concrete demonstration of China’s call for “shelving differences and finding common grounds for cooperation,” in the South China Sea disputes, three state petroleum companies from China, Vietnam, and the Philippines signed an agreement in 2005 to conduct joint tests for seismic activities in the region.19 In 1978, China’s trade with the five original ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines) amounted to only US$859 million.20 In 2008, China-ASEAN trade registered US$231.1 billion, an increase of 14 percent from the previous year.21 By then, ASEAN already constituted the fourth-largest export market for China.22 If Thailand is excluded, China, and not Japan, will be the largest trading partner of ASEAN.23 More than 70 percent of China’s oil supplies come from tankers sailing through the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, where 60 percent of the commercial vessels are heading for China on any day.24 Hence, the peace and stability of Southeast Asia to China is obvious to the Chinese leadership.

China’s Good Neighbor Policy and Central/South Asia A major purpose for China to get involved with Russia and the Central Asian states between 1990 and 1996 was not only to negotiate the settlement of boundary issues with Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, but also to demonstrate to them and the rest of the world that post-Cold War Chinese foreign policy would be conducted on a non-ideological and pragmatic basis. The pragmatic aspect of post-Cold War Chinese foreign policy was demonstrated when, within two days of the collapse of the Soviet Union, China announced on December 27, 1991 that it intended to extend diplomatic recognition to Russia and the former Soviet Central Asian republics, which took place in January 1992, even before Japan or countries of the European Union.25 China, in promoting its Good Neighbor Policy toward Russia and Central Asia, broadly repackaged the “Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence” as the “Shanghai Spirit,” with mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, peaceful bargaining, and respect for differences in the search for common development adopted as the guiding principles of interstate interactions among countries of the Shanghai Five from 1996 to 2001, and then subsequently those of the SCO.26 China’s relations with SCO countries have been considered by Beijing as the model par excellence of economic and security cooperation, particularly in the aspects of reducing trade barriers, constructing energy pipelines and conducting joint anti-terrorist exercises, without political conditions attached, and in upholding the principle of non-interference. In fact, the guiding principles of the “Shanghai Spirit” would come to constitute the basis for the Hu leadership’s “Harmonious World” doctrine. As a quid pro quo for allowing Pakistan and India to join as observer states to the SCO in 2005, both these countries granted China observer status in the South

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy” 23 Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in January 2006, hence enlarging its influence in South Asia. Flowing out of the SCO was a series of trilateral meetings between China, Russia, and India, which began in 2006, and has since showed signs of becoming a routine undertaking. In a joint press conference following the three countries’ foreign ministers’ meeting in October 2007, all three sides expressed opposition to sanctions on Myanmar and were lukewarm to the imposition of sanctions on Iran for suspected nuclear development – a passivity most likely motivated by the desire to secure oil supplies from Iran.27

China’s Good Neighbor Policy and Northeast Asia China wishes to demonstrate its Good Neighbor Policy in Northeast Asia using the ASEAN + 3 as the main conduit for closer economic relations with Japan and South Korea. Aside from proving a huge market for the exports of Japan and South Korea, a major but often overlooked purpose for China having good economic relations with these two countries has been China’s desire to revitalize the aging and loss-making state-owned enterprises in its Northeastern region with both central and local government funds and private capital investments from Japan and South Korea. For traditional and non-traditional security concerns in Northeast Asia, particularly involving denuclearization of North Korea or inter-Korean relations, China will continue to insist on pursuing the ad hoc 6PT as a forum with Russia, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, and the USA, and participate in the “Track II” Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD) involving government officials and academics from the same countries. Uniting the 6PT and the NEACD into a mechanism for confidence and security building, with regular meetings at ministerial level and input from experts to promote greater military transparency, would strengthen and further institutionalize China’s involvement in Northeast Asian affairs. This study looks at China’s involvement in constructing and institutionalizing regional intergovernmental multilateral regimes or structures, centered on Asian and Pacific countries, and aimed at addressing regional challenges. Although the USA is not geographically part of Asia, heavy East Asian trade dependence on the USA, plus its network of alliances and commitments in the region left over from the Cold War, and the salient part that it plays in the 6PT, makes it a power with compelling regional interests and concerns in that region. Its role and influence must be factored into the discussion of regional institution building in the Asia and Pacific regions.

Institutionalizing the Good Neighbor Policy: China’s approaches to regional multilateralism Asian Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda has argued that “a pragmatic, step-by-step, bottom-up approach to regionalism rather than an idealistic, top-down, pan-Asian vision approach … is most appropriate as [Asian] economies

24

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy”

increasingly work together,” and this is in accord with reality.28 Even so, institutionalization of regional processes occurs only when actors make a conscious and public decision to create a specific rule-based organizational form to facilitate their cooperation. The establishment of a permanent organization to administer some policy domain represents an additional degree of institutionalization beyond a decentralized communications network and a set of rules to guide actors.29 Thus established, an international or regional organization of states, or multilateral regime, constitutes a relatively stable group of state officials bound by common purposes, which often develop into concrete entities with headquarters, permanent staffs, budgets, internal procedures, and other resources that can help them shape policies or norms.30 As a multilateral regime refers to a set of mutual expectations, rules and regulations, organization plans, efforts and commitments that have been accepted by a group of state governments,31 the potential for institutionalizing it thus depends on the state actors who are entitled to participate, the distribution of power held by them, their interests in establishing institutionalized cooperation, and the characteristics of the issue-area to be addressed.32 This much the Chinese leadership seems prepared to accept. However, unlike many proponents of EU integration, the PRC elite does not see it as necessary for the constituent states of an evolving regime to share similar economic values, social outlooks or political beliefs, as long as they share common interests and policy purposes, and are prepared to promote trust and predictability in their mutual interactions. This might be related to the elite’s long-held sovereigntist norm of not welcoming perceived interference by foreign governments or non-governmental organizations in the internal affairs or domestic governance of China or other state entities, particularly regarding public lecturing or pressure on changing the political system or human rights situation of a country. In analyzing the construction of a regional order, development issues should not, and, in fact cannot, be studied apart from issues of security. This is because peace preservation and conflict resolution, or at least conflict management, are necessary preconditions for economic development, and development in turn reduces the risk of conflicts. In terms of economics, the form of regional integration championed by China follows the process and direction started by the World Trade Organization in gradually realizing free trade, whereas in terms of security, China promotes a type of regional cooperative security mechanism with the characteristics of guaranteeing peace but not stipulating that an attack on one member is an attack on all other members of the arrangement. This mechanism embraces not exclusionary but rather open membership, and advocates non-violent means of conflict resolution as much as possible, with national governments as primary actors in institutionalizing regional mechanisms on the basis of regularizing multilateral dialogues.33 The Chinese leaders perceive regionalism as not only a “bridge” connecting state-nationalism and globalization, but also perhaps more importantly, as the building block of an equal and multipolar post-hegemonic world order.

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy” 25 China has since the last years of the twentieth century, and particularly under the current Hu-Wen leadership, successfully tied its political, economic, and security interests and international standing to its promotion and institutionalization of all kinds of regional and sub-regional cooperation in Asia. China is playing the role of the leading state, or that of the principal facilitator or mediator, with the support or at least acquiescence of the USA, Russia, Japan, and ASEAN, to further the process of structuralizing or institutionalizing the 6PT, SCO 10 + 3 and 10 + 1, respectively. According to Fu Ying, former DirectorGeneral of the PRC Foreign Ministry’s Department of Asian Affairs, China supports de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula and will establish a framework to strengthen regional cooperation with ASEAN + 3 in Southeast Asia and the SCO in Central Asia as two foreign policy key points.34 According to her, the PRC will also push for trilateral political, economic, and security dialogues and cooperation involving China, Japan, and Korea.35 The ASEAN + 3 and ASEAN + 1 processes have been managed since the mid-1990s within the same PRC Foreign Ministry apparatus, namely, the Division for Regional Cooperation of the Asian Department, which accounts in large part for their policy consistencies and effectiveness.36 In keeping with the measures laid out at the beginning, the degree of institutionalization of a regional multilateral organization is more or less collectively determined by an upward index of the objectives outlined and achieved, norms and procedures established or set of rules written, presence or size of physical structures or a permanent staff, number and type of committees created, and regularity and level of meetings attained. In terms of the index of institutionalization outlined above, the efforts put into the processes of structuralizing APEC, ARF, 6PT, ASEAN + 3 / ASEAN + China, SCO, and the CPIC Forum, and the obstacles faced in their development, serve to reveal the variation. This study asserts, and demonstrates, that the extent of China’s push for institutionalization of cooperative regional multilateral processes reflects considerations of both power politics and shared interests, namely i) the distribution of power among the forum participants, and whether the major players are welldisposed toward China or not so, and ii) the importance of the issues that the specific forum is set up to deal with, particularly in relation to China, but also other participating states. Notwithstanding China’s obvious enthusiasm for helping to establish, develop, and structure certain regional multilateral organizations, it is apparent that the 6PT, ASEAN + China and SCO reflect low, middle, and high levels of institutionalization, even though the forums have become progressively institutionalized as the Four-Party Talks transformed into the 6PT, the Shanghai-5 expanded to become the SCO, and China’s relations with ASEAN consolidated within the 10 + 3 structure into the 10 + 1. Although there is a clear limit to China’s interest in structuralizing APEC or the ARF beyond what it deems is necessary for their minimal functioning, it is quietly moving the CPIC Forum from low to higher levels of institutionalization. This study could find no support for the claim that membership size of a multilateral organization affects the degree of cooperation among its participants.

26

China’s “Good Neighbor Policy”

Also, no support was found for the supposition that China has a certain preference for institutionalizing economic multilateral forums but not security-oriented ones, although Beijing will still not allow the status of Taiwan to be discussed at any of these forums, which it considers to be an internal affair of the Chinese nation. We shall return to these two claims at the conclusion.

3

China’s approaches to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

Introduction: two major visions of economic regionalism From the time of its participation in 1991 until the end of 2001, China used the APEC forum as a vehicle to build support among member economies for its attainment of membership to first the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and then the World Trade Organization (WTO), while at the same time, clearly limiting its trade liberalization commitments in APEC to avoid conceding more in negotiations over WTO accession. These contradictory impulses, and hesitant involvement on the part of China and several Asian countries, led to competing visions or designs of trans-Pacific economic cooperation with mainly non-Asian countries, and rival attempts to unify, or retain, the differences that have evolved in the organization and objectives of APEC, which encompasses half of world trade and investment. This analysis also demonstrates the challenges faced by groups of countries with very different political-economy structures and values as they attempt to constitute an arrangement to gain trade and other advantages. APEC was formed in 1989 on the urgings of the governments of Japan and Australia with 12 founding countries gathering for its first meeting of government ministers on economic matters.1 It was built upon a sense of shared interests and mutual trust derived through the efforts of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC), a quasi-governmental regional institution where government officials from the countries that eventually launched APEC have been participating and interacting in a private capacity with academics and businesspersons since 1980.2 Two decades have passed since APEC was established, and the forum now consists of 21 members. Countries coming together to craft a transnational forum implies a joint search for some common purpose. However, so doing also means that the medium would reflect the confluence or divergence of the national interests and underlying values of the constituent members, particularly that of the larger economies, with these interests and values as defined by their governing elites. For the USA, APEC’s utility depended on its ability to accelerate the process of trade liberalization within the grouping, particularly in improving US access to East Asian markets in areas where the USA is competitive, such as aircraft,

28

China’s approaches to APEC

telecommunications, banking, and insurance, and in strengthening the USA’s hand in trade negotiations with the European Union (EU). A major consideration for both Japan and Australia in helping to bring about APEC was their attempt to thwart protectionist impulses on the part of the Europeans and Americans, through influencing the development of an open or non-discriminatory transPacific trade liberalizing economic arrangement. Japan had also hoped APEC would play to its strength as a major economic power and provide a stage for it to claim a leadership role in the Asian half of the forum through its trade with, investment in, technological transfers to, and financial institutions operating in other Asian countries. China’s vision for APEC was that of a consultative forum where decisions should be made gradually and through consensus, and where economic and technical cooperation should be carried out on an equal footing with the reduction of trade barriers.3 China had hoped that APEC could assuage US unilateralism in trade relations, enhance its prospects of gaining admission into the WTO, and legitimize its expanding influence in the Asia-Pacific region.4 As for the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), although fully cognizant of APEC’s usefulness in keeping the US market open in the face of increasing American protectionist sentiments, they were worried that joining APEC would mean diluting the salient position of ASEAN as a bloc in managing Southeast Asian affairs for themselves. At a ministerial conference at Kuching, Malaysia, in 1990, the ASEAN countries came to a consensus that participation in APEC must not come at the expense of ASEAN unity and cohesion, that APEC should not evolve from a forum for discussion into an arena for economic bargaining or negotiation, and that APEC ought not be transformed into a formal, structured institution.5 As APEC evolved, an “evolutionary approach” generally favored by the Asian, Chinese and developing member governments or economies loosely organized around a forum where commitments are voluntary, with emphasis on arriving at consensus unhurriedly through personal diplomacy and informal discussions, has come to dominate the modus operandi of the forum. This has often been contrasted with a “legalistic and institutional approach” championed by the USA, and supported by Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which was to focus on building APEC up as a formal and structured organization where the primary function of structured negotiations is to produce binding contracts and agreements.6 In the former case, the appeal and stress is on the contribution to national development and domestic security through technical and economic cooperation – the subsumption of markets to the political logic of security and order,7 whereas in the latter case, the construction of a trans-Pacific market is conceived primarily in terms of maximizing individual choice by locking in the liberalization of trade and associated economic processes through binding comprehensive targets. Reflecting two major organizational modes of economic regionalism, this division in the fundamental outlook for the forum has led to differences over how best to reach APEC’s goals of trade liberalization, the extent to which APEC should be institutionalized, and the items to be put on the agenda of the annual

China’s approaches to APEC

29

meetings, differences that are at times so deep that the effective functioning of the forum itself gets questioned. These divergent approaches almost guarantee that, although there is broad agreement among APEC member economies on the principles of economic cooperation and liberalization of trade and investment, consensus on any concrete issue will typically be hard to achieve.

One “Western/American/Structural” design (1989–1993) The earliest “Western/American/Structured” (shortened to “Western”) vision or design for APEC was what the USA, major Western countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and Japan had in mind as far back as the occasion of its inaugural meeting, then only at the level of ministers concerned with foreign and economic matters, in Canberra, Australia, in November 1989. Such a design would have accorded well with the structured and bureaucratized representative democratic systems of governance that policy-makers in these countries embrace. The USA was initially not too enthusiastic about APEC, still trying to figure out its exact purpose. However, when an expert body of economic advisors, known as the Eminent Persons’ Group, was constituted by the forum at its 1992 meeting, and soon took on the task of advocating across-the-board trade liberalization, Washington’s interest in the grouping was greatly raised. The high point of the “Western” design was reached at the first APEC Headsof-State Meeting or Leaders’ Summit at Blake Island off Seattle in the USA in November 1993, when the host, US President Bill Clinton, suggested renaming and structuralizing the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation as the Asia-Pacific Economic Community, along the lines of the European Economic Community, precursor of the EU. President Clinton had pointed out that US strategic policy in the Asia-Pacific region would henceforth be based on three elements i) comprehensive US involvement in Asia-Pacific economic cooperation, ii) realization of an Asia-Pacific multilateral security mechanism under US leadership, and iii) promoting democratization in Asia-Pacific countries.8 The American vision for APEC was clearly not just for the forum to push for a structured Asia-Pacific-wide free trade area, but also for the body to turn into a multilateral security arrangement under the direction of the USA, and realize its objective of spreading political pluralism. As primarily an economic forum, trade liberalization, in the “Western” vision, was to be APEC’s principal objective, as it was that of the USA, which organized, led and dominated the Seattle Meeting. At least until 1995, the US economic policy stance on APEC could be summarized as follows i) transform APEC as soon as possible into an Asia-Pacific free trade area through negotiations and agreements, ii) liberalize trade in all economic sectors to avoid delay and allowing member economies to make strategic choices of “pick and choose,” iii) adopt the principle of discrimination between member and non-member economies to avoid non-member economies “free riding” on APEC’s trade liberalization efforts, and iv) push for a structured forum with legally binding commitments through collective agreement.9 As outlined in 1992 by the Australian government,

30

China’s approaches to APEC

there were four steps for APEC to take to advance its trade liberalization objectives: reduce uncertainties in the regional market, address physical impediments to trade, harmonize national regulations and standards, and improve market access.10 The Anglophone industrialized economies saw traditional business practices elsewhere, particularly in the East and Southeast Asian countries, as manifesting widespread collusion, between firms, across industries, and among the political and economic elites, based on patronage and close personal ties, and these entrenched customs and domestic interest networks were what they wished to sweep away with the promotion and institutionalization of trade liberalization within APEC. Debates over free trade, and the attendant principle of discrimination, would become the major bones of contention between the USA and industrialized Western economies on the one hand, and China and the developing Asian economies on the other. China was obviously too large an Asian-Pacific economy to be left out of the forum, but its membership has proven to be problematic right from the beginning. The USA has argued that, as China was not a market economy, it should not be allowed to join APEC. However, as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) claims Taiwan as part of its territory and was about to “resume” sovereignty over Hong Kong from Britain, diplomatic realities dictated that the exclusion of China would also mean the exclusion of the vibrant market economies of Hong Kong and Taiwan. This quandary was resolved when, as the 1991 Seoul ministerial meeting approached, Taiwan agreed to attend APEC meetings as “Chinese Taipei,” together with China and Hong Kong.11 China accepted this arrangement reluctantly, as long as all APEC members were designated as “economies” and not “states.” This quid pro quo reflected China’s diplomatic weakness and isolation in the wake of the June 1989 Tiananmen incident, and its concern not to be left out of an emerging intergovernmental regional economic process, particularly as about 75 percent of China’s trade and 80 percent of its foreign capital in the early 1990s involved other APEC members.12 APEC governments then agreed that China would have an effective veto over who would represent Taiwan at the leaders’ and other meetings. The major institutional advancements for APEC took place between the 1992 ministerial meeting in Singapore and 1994 leaders’ meeting in Bogor, Indonesia. A small secretariat with a very limited budget, autonomy and research capability was established at the Singapore meeting to facilitate and coordinate APEC activities. The APEC Secretariat in Singapore is led by an Executive Director representing the member economy that is the annual host of the APEC process, and usually aided by one official seconded from the foreign affairs or trade ministries of each of the member economies for two to three years, and a proximate number of locally recruited administrative support staff.13 Aside from the Secretariat, an Eminent Persons’ Group (EPG) was also established at the 1992 meeting, the majority of whose members were economists under the chairmanship of American economist C. Fred Bergsten, and saw the task of the EPG as

China’s approaches to APEC

31

devising a roadmap for APEC to set itself on the path of trade, investment, and later even financial liberalization. It was at the Seattle Leaders’ Meeting in 1993 that arrangements were made for the two arguably most important APEC standing policy committees, the Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI) and the Budget and Management Committee (BMC) to be established in 1994 and meet twice a year. The Economic Committee, established at the Fourth APEC Ministerial Meeting in 1994, has a mandate to promote structural, regulatory, and legal reform in member economies, but this committee has been extremely hesitant, and one may even say, almost powerless, to impose any changes within the forum, except by organizing seminars and workshops on strengthening economic and legal infrastructure.14 By 1994, institutionally, aside from the Secretariat, there were in place five levels of organizational activities, from top to bottom: APEC Informal Leaders’ Meeting, Ministerial Meeting, Sectoral Ministerial Meeting, Senior Officers’ Meeting (SOM), and committee or working group meeting. Typically, the APEC Informal Leaders’ Meeting takes place during the second half of every year, coinciding with concurrent meetings of foreign ministers, ministers of economics and trade, and business leaders. These ministerial meetings, which approve the budget and set policy directions for the forum in the following year, build on the ministerial meetings of economic sectors held occasionally throughout the year, all of which are supported by the SOMs, which are held four times a year, and serve as a coordinating body for the committees and working groups.15

Two competing designs: “Western/American/Structured” versus “Asian/Chinese/Process-oriented” (1994–1995) Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) disseminated a proposal to Asia-Pacific countries in mid-1988 for an annual series of regional economic ministers’ meetings, in which the Australian government of Prime Minister Bob Hawke expressed strong interest, leading to coordination between Japan and Australia to carry out the APEC initiative.16 The “Asia-Pacific” regional concept was an indication that Asian countries were ripe for recognition as a core group in regional economic cooperation and targets for trade liberalization efforts, as a result of their decades of substantial growth. Even so, as a regional trade grouping, APEC has had a competitor almost right from its birth that refuses to go away. Worries about emerging trade blocs and protectionism in Europe and North America led Malaysia in December 1990 to propose an East Asian Economic Group (EAEG) that excluded the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. US officials opposed the proposal for “drawing a line down the Pacific,” and, under pressure from Washington, Tokyo was noncommittal about EAEG.17 As decided at the ASEAN finance ministers’ meeting in October 1991, EAEG was renamed EAEC, grouping the ASEAN states with China, Japan, and South Korea into an “East Asian Economic Caucus” within APEC to discuss issues of common concern to East Asian economies, despite

32

China’s approaches to APEC

US opposition.18 Except for the open, industrialized and heavily export-oriented economies of Hong Kong and Singapore, which are ardent free-trade advocates, the EAEC would become, for the “Western” design, a viper in APEC’s womb, and an altogether self-standing ASEAN + 3 conclave by December 1997. As a large and expanding economy, the role of China in APEC is obviously important in determining the goals and direction of the forum. When China joined APEC, some Chinese policy-makers were worried that the developed economies, led by the USA and Japan, might dominate APEC. However, they were soon reassured by the presence of other countries also concerned about the potential dominance of larger powers. APEC membership included the ASEAN collective, which like China, remained highly committed to the norm of upholding sovereignty in the conduct of international relations, and very cautious in making sure that APEC’s institutional development would not constrain members to a course of action that they have no wish to pursue. In the run-up to hosting the 1994 APEC Leaders’ Summit in Bogor summit, President Suharto of Indonesia was convinced by the USA and Australia to press the cause for trade liberalization within APEC, at least to set a timetable to that effect.19 Although Suharto seemed to have lost interest in this cause when his country was no longer the host of APEC, the dominant theme at Bogor would continue to be the free trade push championed by the USA and other Western countries. However, by pointing out at Bogor, as PRC President Jiang Zemin did, that diversity of the political systems, institutions, and values precluded the pursuit of uniformity as unrealistic,20 China and ASEAN effectively set aside US President Clinton’s prior proposals at Seattle for “securitizing” APEC or institutionalizing it to any meaningful extent. One of China’s main objectives in APEC is to strengthen its relationship with ASEAN.21 Within APEC, China has unfailingly supported ASEAN’s 1990 “Kuching Consensus,” based on the “ASEAN Way,” which has evolved through decades of interaction among ASEAN member states and is characterized by the norms of decision-making based on consensus, gradualism, and voluntarism.22 China shares the belief with ASEAN and other developing countries within APEC that, because the economic starting points of members are different, their abilities to sustain market opening efforts are also different, and hence the principle of non-binding unilateral action after consultation should apply with respect to effecting trade liberalization measures. China and other developing countries in APEC were successful in making their case at Bogor for a deadline of 2010 for developed countries to carry out free trade and investment within the forum, whereas developing countries will have up till 2020 to meet these goals.23 This 1994 Bogor Declaration would prove to be the high-water mark in the operationalization of APEC, as few tangible results have been achieved since then, with the advent of the “Asian/Chinese/Process-oriented” (shortened to “Asian”) design for the forum, championed by China, South Korea, and most countries of ASEAN. Although Malaysia rejected outright Bogor’s liberalization timetable, ASEAN and China had achieved broad agreement by the time of that summit on what should be their preferred form of cooperation within APEC, to be based on the

China’s approaches to APEC

33

norms or principles of voluntary and unilateral action, consensus, “open regionalism” through non-discriminatory trade and investment liberalization, equal attention to both liberalization and interstate economic and technical cooperation, and retaining APEC as an official forum for discussion but not negotiation.24 By the end of 1994, ASEAN governments had come to an agreement to negate any notion of embracing binding investment principles or adopting dispute settlement mechanisms, both recommended by the EPG. To quote Feinberg, “member governments purposefully eschewed creation of a powerful international bureaucracy that might develop a mind of its own … whose relative autonomy might give it the power and the will to drive policy.”25 In rejecting “Western” bargaining methods with specific goals, APEC fell back practically by default on the less structured and more informal “Asian” approach, characterized by unilateral and voluntary measures that appear to reflect and withstand better the sensitive sovereignty concerns, powerful domestic political–economic interests, diverse political beliefs, different levels of economic development, and occasionally difficult foreign relations of countries, or economies, in the broad Asia-Pacific region. ASEAN governments then successfully asked for the EPG’s mandate to be terminated at the 1995 Leaders’ Meeting in Osaka, to be replaced by an APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) for the diffused business community to serve as the forum’s peak advisory body. Although ABAC sends a representative to APEC Ministerial Meetings and business groups played an important role in pushing for the liberalization of both intra-Asian and trans-Pacific information technology (IT) and telecommunications trade, replacing EPG with ABAC cannot be considered progress in the institutionalization of APEC. As how liberalized trade should be has become a contentious issue within the forum, since most developing member economies did not seem to want free trade to be thrust upon them, Bogor did not determine any final standards for trade liberalization. That is, it never defined whether tariff should be eliminated entirely or reduced to a low figure of, say, 3 percent or 5 percent. Consequently, when leaders to the APEC summit in 1995 in Osaka, Japan, met to finalize the Osaka Action Agenda, where member economies undertook to “gradually reduce tariffs and non-tariff measures,” no quantitative or joint targets were set. Although the USA, Australia and other major agriculture exporting countries were in favor of trade liberalization in all areas, South Korea and Japan in particular argued for the exclusion of agriculture and other areas that they considered to be politically sensitive from such consideration,26 given the strength of the farmers’ lobby in their electoral processes. Malaysia and Thailand both have domestic automobile and automobile parts industries that they wished to protect. Osaka also failed to resolve the issue of “non-discrimination,” whereby any trade or investment privileges given by one APEC member economy to another will automatically be extended to non-APEC members. This failure was primarily due to the fact that the USA was afraid that, if the principle of “non-discrimination” were adopted, then Most Favored Nation (MFN) status would have to be automatically and unconditionally extended to a major economy like China, which was, as yet, not a member of GATT/WTO. Thus, after heated debate, the Osaka Action Agenda

34

China’s approaches to APEC

managed only to urge APEC member economies to exert their best effort to realize the “non-discrimination” principle.27 Although tariff barriers were by then very low for the USA as compared to other APEC economies, there were still quite a few items in its non-tariff menu from which it could have chosen to reduce import barriers but did not,28 therefore undermining what the USA has exhorted other APEC members to do. The major benefit for China and developing countries in Asia is the “flexibility” as arrived at through the artful waffling and compromises by APEC members at the Osaka meeting. Considering the great diversity in the stages of economic development and socio-political systems among member economies, a “flexible” approach in settling down to a consensual and non-binding style of policy cooperation is perhaps necessary to overcome mutual distrust and initiate and implement actions. As China is a large developing country with low per capita income, on the difficult road from reforming a planned economic system into a marketoriented one, it wanted APEC to move gradually, and consensually, which means giving every member an effective veto over any proposal that, in its opinion, may have an adverse effect on it if implemented. For the developing countries, the free trade objective, if pursued too fast and too furiously, risks exposing many of their manufacturing and service industries to competitive pressures that they could not withstand.29 Japan was determined to keep tariffs on imported rice, wheat, and other cereals in the range of 300–500 percent,30 to protect its politically influential agricultural sector, and began to realize that moving closer to the Asian position on the non-binding, voluntary, consensual, and non-discriminatory nature of APEC’s functioning may garner it the support of Asian countries in deflecting US pressure on trade liberalization.31 Obviously disappointed with the “flexibility” already demonstrated by APEC member economies at Bogor, US President Clinton skipped Osaka altogether. Since 1995, the lofty goals of trade and investment liberalization have in reality been replaced by that of business facilitation in focusing on simplifying custom and other procedures, reducing the costs of business transactions, and promoting the exchange of trade information. At the 2001 APEC summit in China’s Shanghai, the USA tried to revise the Osaka Action Agenda, by introducing proposals such as the liberalization of tariffs until they reached zero, reduction of all non-tariff measures to the maximum possible extent, and elimination of all such measures counter to WTO stipulations, but it did not manage to have any of these suggestions included in the final declaration,32 which reflected the degree of disagreement among APEC participants.

One “Asian/Chinese/Process-oriented” design (1996–2000) ASEAN and Chinese officials have always insisted that economic and technical cooperation should receive at least equal priority with trade and investment liberalization on APEC’s agenda.33 During the leaders’ meeting at Manila in 1996, both the Chinese President and Foreign Minister came out strongly in favor of strengthening economic and technical cooperation within APEC. At the close of the meeting, under the aegis of host Philippines, an “APEC Framework Declaration

China’s approaches to APEC

35

on the Principles of Economic and Technical Cooperation” was adopted, which reflected the importance attached to economic and technical cooperation by developing members of APEC, more so than to trade and financial liberalization, which was the preference of the forum’s more industrialized members. The Manila Action Plan, arrived at through the 1996 APEC Manila ministerial meeting, outlined six areas for economic and technical cooperation (“Ecotech”): developing human capital, fostering sound and efficient capital markets, strengthening economic infrastructure, harnessing technologies of the future, promoting environmentally sustainable growth, and encouraging the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises.34 Thus, “Ecotech” aims to develop human capital through technical training, build state or institutional capacity as a foundation for economic growth, and reduce economic disparities among APEC member economies. Developing countries see “Ecotech” as a foundation for promoting national economic development and poverty reduction, which would, in turn, serve as a basis for accepting trade and investment liberalization in the indefinite future. As written into the Manila Action Plan, APEC’s main vehicle for advancing toward the Bogor goal of “free and open trade and investment” is the Individual Action Plans (IAPs) submitted by member economies. The reporting of IAPs is based on activities to meet the goals of free and open trade and investment in such areas as tariffs, non-tariff measures, investment, services, customs procedures, standards, intellectual property, competition policy, government procurement, deregulation, rules of origin, and dispute mediation.35 In addition, Collective Action Plans (CAPs) assist economic integration through the forum’s provision of databases, promotion of transparency, studies of best practices and policy initiatives, and business facilitation.36 Neither commitments to the targets outlined in the IAPs nor those in the CAPs are binding. Even though APEC has instituted peer review of member economies’ IAPs,37 under the principle of voluntarism, countries approach the Bogor targets at their own pace, which cannot guarantee faithful and effective enforcement. Criteria for membership could not be agreed upon at the 1997 summit in Vancouver, Canada, so a 10-year moratorium on new membership was then instituted, although Vietnam, Peru and Russia as Pacific Rim countries were allowed to join APEC the following year on an extemporized basis. Concerning APEC’s concerted Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization (EVSL) scheme, introduced at the Vancouver summit, it was clear that Japan, which by then was firmly in the economic doldrums, would not liberalize its agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors to trade, given their politically powerful lobbies, despite intense pressure from the USA.38 Since the failure of EVSL negotiations in 1998, torpedoed by Japan, with support from other Asian countries, in order to protect narrow domestic interests, US efforts to push for more rapid trade liberalization within APEC have been largely stymied. Since the 1998 summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the 1999 summit in Auckland, New Zealand, whatever remains of liberalization efforts within APEC was left to individual member economies to put in place on a sectoral basis unilaterally.39 APEC lost considerable credibility when it proved unable to come up with any concrete measures to assist Asian member economies ravaged by the financial crisis then raging through the region.

36

China’s approaches to APEC

With the Asian financial crisis in 1997–1999, US pressure on affected countries to adopt liberal economic reforms was dramatically increased, with loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia made conditional on establishing new regulatory, bankruptcy and accounting procedures, liberalization of capital markets, privatization of public enterprises, and the breaking up of cartels.40 The overall approach taken by the USA through the IMF and World Bank reflected their collective perspective that Japan’s economic problems and the Asian crisis flow from the inefficiencies and distortions of the various state-centered approaches to capitalist development that prevail in East Asia. The Asian financial crisis did afford a chance for the deepening of economic liberalism in East Asia, particularly in the countries that suffered the most, but it also led to a crisis of faith in international economic institutions led by the USA, and made the American position deeply unpopular within APEC with regional countries. Up till the time of its joining the WTO, Beijing had sought to use APEC as a shield to resist external pressure for the rapid dismantling of trade barriers, and was altogether opposed to adding capital market liberalization to the APEC agenda, by arguing that financial liberalization was none of APEC’s business.41 To many in the Chinese officialdom, APEC remains one aspect of US strategy to enhance its national economic competitiveness through breaking down the trade and financial entry barriers of member economies to its penetration. Thus, when ASEAN suggested abolishing the EPG, headed by the fervent American free trade advocate C. Fred Bergsten, this stance was supported by China to curb what it perceived to be US influence and free trade crusading in APEC. Given the by-then dominant “Asian” approach in APEC, the success that the USA had in 2000 in convincing member economies to support significant reductions in tariffs for integrated circuits, semi-conductors, computer software and other IT products, of which the USA is the world’s biggest exporter, albeit on an individual and voluntary basis, should be considered no mean feat. The Americans have since been persuaded by other Asia-Pacific countries to be less confrontational toward China and more accommodating toward a much slower pace of realizing regional and global free trade than that which they themselves would prefer. For Japan, putting the brakes on any concerted APEC push for trade liberalization has the advantage of aligning it more closely with Chinese and ASEAN interests and perceptions.42 Over the years, all players have agreed, reluctantly or otherwise, that APEC would essentially be a non-formal or minimally institutionalized forum for consultations and discussions among high-level representatives of member economies on matters of common interest and concern, particularly in the economic realm. Hence, leaders’ meetings are customarily prefixed with the term “informal,” and all rules and principles adopted by APEC are labeled as “non-binding.”43

One (“economic”) and a half (“security”) design (since 2001) China and the ASEAN collectivity have always emphasized that regional cooperation, in both economic and security spheres, must take into account the principles

China’s approaches to APEC

37

of national sovereignty and non-intervention in the domestic affairs of states. Heterogeneity of political systems, sovereignty claims, border disputes, secessionist actions, security tensions and mutual suspicions among members have caused APEC meetings to exclude security and political issues from their agenda. However, since the APEC summit of 2001, it was agreed that such issues could be discussed, but only if they pertain directly to the economic security of member economies. Meeting in China’s Shanghai just one month after the 9-11 attacks, APEC leaders at their 2001 summit promised to cooperate with the USA to counter all forms of terrorism, acknowledging that terrorist activities endanger the security and prosperity of the whole world. The harmful effects of terrorism on tourism were threatening a significant source of many member countries’ economic development. The resultant “APEC Leaders’ Statement on Counter-Terrorism” directed members’ finance and transportation ministries to, respectively, freeze the funds of terrorist organizations and improve air and maritime security. This Statement was the first political-cum-security declaration by APEC since its formation. Under an arrangement made by China as the host of the summit, no representatives from Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) or Hong Kong were allowed to attend the discussions pertaining to terrorism, as they were regarded by the Chinese as only non-sovereign economies.44 Hosting the 2001 APEC Informal Leaders’ Summit in Shanghai has been seen by the Chinese as an important measure in the heralding of China as a major responsible power in the international stage. Although China’s average tariff in 1993 was still 37.5 percent, by 2002 the figure had reached 12 percent.45 Not to be upstaged by American concerns about matters of anti-terrorism and security, the Chinese government made a commitment to APEC to instruct 1500 high-level specialists in computer website maintenance at its expense for the following three years and to contribute US$2 million to train personnel in the areas of finance.46 Following the terrorist bombing in Bali in October 2002, at the APEC leaders’ meeting at Los Lobos, Mexico, the USA led a drive by member governments to cooperate in notifying one another’s immigration authorities of suspicious travelers and increase customs security in monitoring shipping containers from highrisk points of origin. Measures such as requiring biometric technology on exit and entry documents, as well as standardized passenger and baggage screening, were all part of the US proposal.47 At the 2003 APEC meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, the USA managed to persuade fellow APEC members to set up a Counter-Terrorism Task Force to study the issue of terrorist threats. APEC’s 2004 summit meetings in Santiago, Chile, and the 2005 meeting in Busan, South Korea, have continued to provide occasions for world leaders to confer on major issues such as North Korea’s nuclear intentions and emphasize the need to pursue counter-terrorism measures. The 2006 APEC meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, further pledged to improve aviation security and encourage member economies to develop strategies and share best practices to defend food supply from deliberate contamination. At the 2007 APEC meeting in Sydney, Australia, the host country, together with the USA, brokered a draft for forum leaders to adopt that would reduce energy intensity by 25 percent and increase forest

38

China’s approaches to APEC

cover by at least 50 million acres in APEC member economies by 2030; however, true to APEC practices, the draft also stipulated that both goals are non-binding.48 The 2008 APEC meeting in Lima, Peru, merely called on member economies not to adopt trade protectionist measures during trying economic times. Confounding wide expectations, disagreements at the 2009 APEC meeting in Singapore precluded the adoption of a target for reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions in the summit’s final statement. Although APEC was not set up as a confidence-building mechanism, the annual summitry does provide for the leaders of member economies more than a “photo opportunity;” it offers a regular channel to meet and exchange views on one another’s positions on important affairs affecting the world. There is no sign that the institutionalization of the forum has somehow progressed beyond allowing it to remain principally a discussion group, albeit a high-level one, for economic and related security interests. This is because there are few common and concrete purposes for members to work on. APEC members do not have a universal enemy, terrorist or otherwise, that threatens them all in the same way or to the same degree. What they do have are different interests of state and values of political-economy. As a multilateral forum with many meetings, seminars, workshops, projects, reports, and organs, APEC is not particularly well-endowed financially, with its Secretariat’s annual operating budget, including building rent and staff’s salaries, totaling a mere US$4 million.49 This is in accord with the structural minimization approach for APEC favored by its developing country members. As for projects funded by APEC, there are currently 251 with US$18.5 million in funding, at an average of less than US$74,000 for each project,50 with very few ever allocated up to the per project limit of US$300,000.51 Yet even with financing a small survey, conference, or database construction, any APEC member economy can veto it through an action of indefinite delay by one of its representatives in the meetings of the BMC, senior officials or ministers as it moves up the endorsement process.52 To allow some APEC members to move faster on specific liberalization measures, APEC encourages “Pathfinder Initiatives.”53 However, as APEC commitments are not legal but rather political in adhering to the by-now paramount “Asian+” design, there can be no sanctions to punish laggards or defectors. Peer pressure from fellow economies to get an APEC agenda adopted works only to the extent that it is in the interest of a member to accept that pressure. Decisions made at the APEC summits and ministerial meetings, if there are any, are non-binding, and left to individual members to execute. The goal of maintaining a tranquil atmosphere at APEC meetings is overriding.54 As such, most APEC activities still remain at the stage of promoting dialogue, exchanging information, holding seminars, and publishing reports.

The future of APEC and China’s turn to other economic groupings By putting out serious proposals for free trade and investment with full preparation for its non-execution, notwithstanding the supposed role of peer pressure or

China’s approaches to APEC

39

concern with diffused reputation, APEC seems to have settled on an uneasy, and perhaps institutionalized, game of compromise between the preferences of the go-getting Westerners and the foot-dragging Asians. The crux of the contention in designing alternative visions for APEC may be seen as a reflection of opposing interests on liberalization and institutionalization within the forum between the USA, its allies, developed or industrialized countries and newly industrialized economies on the one hand, and China and developing or industrializing countries on the other hand, with Japan moving from the “Western” “camp” to the “Asian” one sometime between 1994 and 1995. Adherents of the “Western” design see a positive correlation between openness to the global economy and nations’ gross domestic product growth rates, and would like to promote and perpetuate the advantages that, as competitive economies, they enjoy or would do so with trade and investment liberalization. Advocates of the “Asian” vision, despite suffering through the adverse impact that the Asian financial crisis had in varying degrees on their economies, and conceding that the attendant vested interests, bureaucratic red-tape and corruption do inhibit economic competition, still believe to some extent in preserving the businesspolitical nexus and sovereignty-upholding industrial policies that have brought a respectable measure of political stability, material prosperity, and diplomatic influence to countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. These two roadmaps reflect differences of belief and interest and are not easily reconcilable. The 1993 inaugural APEC Leaders’ Summit at Seattle was significant to the extent that the profile of the forum was henceforth heightened. By 1995, the institutional or organizational structure of APEC that exists today had been put in place, but it was also at the Osaka Summit that the last major joint effort to push for comprehensive trade and investment liberalization clearly failed, and where members decided that an autonomous structure for the forum was not in the offing by abolishing the EPG. By the end of 1997, technical and developmental issues had clearly dominated forum deliberations, and APEC’s EAEC sub-grouping had become formalized as a self-standing ASEAN + 3, grouping leaders of ASEAN, Japan, China, and South Korea together in annual conclaves, which are independent of APEC but adopt, naturally it would seem, the forum’s “Asian” design as a working ethos. As Asian economies have recovered from the devastating financial crisis of last century’s end and the debilitating Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, and amid the swift economic rise of China, the “Asian” design for APEC, with its emphasis on voluntary action, political commitment, open regionalism, and broad economic cooperation, is likely to continue dominating the forum’s enterprise at the expense of the “Western” one, based on negotiated agreement, legal obligation, specific reciprocity, and sharply focused agenda.55 Although India had expressed its desire to join APEC, the forum decided at its 2007 summit that India’s case will not be discussed before 2010. The view from China and Malaysia was that Western economies in APEC had apparently delayed India’s application because of worries that, as a large developing Asian economy, its joining would increase Asia’s weight in APEC,56 and move the forum even further away from the “Western” design.

40

China’s approaches to APEC

Given its important economic and security roles in the Asia-Pacific region, the USA has preferred, and still prefers, to deal with regional polities on a bilateral basis. Having secured a free trade agreement (FTA) with Singapore by the end of 2002, the USA voiced interest in exploring similar deals with Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.57 The spirited pursuit of bilateral FTAs reflects Washington’s ambivalence about the continuing prospects of a regional economic forum that is seemingly ineffective, at least from the point of view of securing definite commitments from East Asian governments to liberalize US imports into regional economies. Even on crucial matters such as the reduction of the more than US$200 billion trade deficit with China, accompanied by charges of dumping, high tariffs, inconsistent application of laws and regulations, and intellectual property rights violation, the USA has not sought to use APEC to any extent as an arena to exert pressure on Beijing, preferring instead to do so at bilateral meetings with Chinese government officials. Although an APEC led by the USA would not have been welcomed by every member economy, an absentee or absent-minded role on its part would put the continuing effectiveness of the forum into very serious doubt. Coming out of more than a decade of sluggish growth, industrial closures, lost jobs, contraction in bank lending, and frequent loan recalls,58 Japan concluded FTAs with Singapore and Mexico to spur on its economy. Hedging against the success of the WTO’s Doha Round on trade liberalization and the efficacy of APEC, Singapore completed similar agreements with Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and the European Free Trade Association countries.59 Since joining APEC, China has used the forum to improve and develop its diplomatic profile and economic relations with countries in the Asia-Pacific region it sees as important. APEC is now far from being the only regional forum in which China is a member; nonetheless, taking part in the activities of APEC has the important consequence of raising the confidence and reducing the suspicion of the Chinese leadership and foreign policy community in interacting with foreign officials and diplomats. At the same time that the USA is widely viewed as backing down from the multilateral approach, and Japan is seen as engaging in more protectionist economic policies, China is increasingly stressing a more proactive foreign policy and liberal economic agenda, in endorsing multilateral structures, supporting freer trade, and sponsoring security arrangements.60 China has become keen to promote regional institutions where the USA and its allies are excluded, such as the Shanghai Cooperative Organization, ASEAN + 3 and ASEAN + China, under the rubric of which ASEAN states and China signed the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation in 2002 to begin negotiations to realize an ASEAN-China Free Trade Area between China and all ASEAN states by 2015. China’s participation in APEC can be expected to continue at some perfunctory level, but the flow of real diplomatic energy would swing toward the realm of bilateral relations and smaller and more tightly organized multilateral organizations where China feels not only more comfortable, but also more economically powerful. The “concerted unilateral liberalization” touted in APEC’s IAP scheme has been displaced by “concerted bilateral liberalization,”61 in the sense that bilateral

China’s approaches to APEC

41

trade agreements have clearly emerged as the preferred mechanism for APEC member economies to realize reciprocal market access, despite complex rules of origin documentation and the possibility of trade diversion, consequently making APEC itself virtually redundant as a forum to advance overall freer trade. In 2007, APEC accepted a proposal by Australia and Japan to add to the Secretariat a small Policy Support Unit, to be funded by voluntary contributions, to provide expert analysis, prepare policy papers for APEC committees, and design and implement capacity-building programs.62 Given the apparent failure of the Doha Round, the USA has also agreed to consider seriously the idea of a Free Trade Area for the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) put forth by ABAC.63 If the Policy Support Unit proves effective and the FTAAP comes to fruition, the modus operandi of APEC may move, at least partway, back to the “Western” design, but given the existing culture of the forum, these are long shots. Even APEC’s own goal of creating a free trade and investment zone among its developed member economies by 2010 has been quietly dropped. Yet, despite its many limitations and unfulfilled promises as a multilateral decision-making process for trade and investment policy issues, APEC has brought together the leaders of most economies of any size on both sides of the Pacific Ocean to discuss trade, investment, and of late, economic security and even environmental concerns; provided the USA with a platform to demonstrate to the world a greater degree of economic multilateralism than before; and proven to be a useful vehicle in “socializing” China into becoming a more accepted and committed member of the international system. Even though China’s participation in APEC, and also in the ARF, has emphasized a process-oriented Asian form of informal and voluntary arrangement, rather than a more structured Western type of legalistic and binding institutionalization, it could be suggested in later years that China’s conduct in regional organizations, especially those which it has a major say in evolving, would actually move partway from the former approach toward that of the latter.

4

China’s approaches to the ASEAN Regional Forum

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a member of only two regular regional security organizations in which representatives of national governments are the participants – the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the Shanghai Cooperative Organization (SCO). The PRC plays salient roles in both the ARF and SCO, although for different reasons. The PRC’s participation in the ARF and SCO reflects its growing attention to security-related matters in the Asia-Pacific and Central Asia-Eurasia regions, respectively, since the mid-1990s. Both the ARF and SCO serve the PRC’s security interests in its neighborhood: the ARF does so by giving the Chinese a major voice in the process of conflict management in Southeast Asia, and the SCO does so by pledging security cooperation with Central Asian states and Russia in a Chinese sponsored grouping to fight the “three evils” of separatism, terrorism, and Islamic extremism.1 The PRC’s involvement in both organizations also demonstrates its pursuit of a foreign policy strategy to reduce perception of a putative threat from an economically and militarily rising China to countries in the surrounding Pacific and Asian regions.

Definition of a regional security organization Seeking regional solutions to regional problems through organizations of regional states has been encouraged by the United Nations (UN) under Chapter VIII, Articles 52–54 of its founding charter.2 A regional organization, the primary purpose of which is to maintain the peace and security of nation states in a geographical region, is usually referred to as a regional security organization. Regional security organizations are born out of the understanding that no single state actor can achieve security through unilateral means, and that communication, transparency, and dialogue need to be fostered among states to enhance security. Hence, a central purpose of a regional security organization is to enhance the security and welfare of participating states through cooperation and collective action to promote trust and confidence. Regional security organizations can be treaty alliances or groups of states organized for the purpose of collective self-defense against a specific threat, but the ARF and the SCO are neither of these. They may instead be considered as

China’s approaches to the ARF

43

security dialogue arrangements or cooperative security organizations among countries. These mechanisms are oriented toward inclusive membership, consultation, and confidence-building, geared as much to process/engagement as to result/achievement, engineered for mediation rather than arbitration, and not organized to face down imminent attacks or external aggression.3 As regional security organizations, the ARF and SCO, through their institutional structures, member states’ interests, threats and norms, and China’s roles and influence, have varying impacts on the peace and security of Asia and the Pacific.

Characteristics of the ARF as a regional security organization for Asia-Pacific The establishment of the ARF at the ASEAN (Foreign) Ministerial Meeting at Bangkok, Thailand, in 1994 owed much to changes in the external security environment in the East Asia-Western Pacific region following the end of the Cold War. The ARF came out of earlier suggestions by Canada and Australia that Asia-Pacific states create a multilateral forum to discuss regional security, to which Japan later added its voice. Japan wanted to create a regional framework to build mutual trust, resolve ongoing disputes such as those on the Korean peninsula and the South China Sea, and join up with other countries sharing similar security concerns to press these issues more forcefully at a multilateral forum.4 The US Clinton Administration, which took office in January 1993, perceived a greater need for a regional security dialogue than its predecessor, although it still saw the emerging multilateral security dialogues as “a way to supplement our alliances and forward military presence, not to supplant them.”5 Thus, the resultant ARF is acceptable to the US because the ARF’s “low-risk, snail-pace” process is a low-cost approach to supplementing US bilateral defense arrangements in the Asia-Pacific,6 that does not in any case involve the dilution or abandonment of existing bilateral security treaty obligations with its allies. The birth of the ARF also reflected an expansion in the agenda of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) from economic cooperation to involvement in regional political and security matters. ASEAN member states worried that should the USA significantly reduce its post-Cold War security presence in the region, local arms races could be triggered. Given the uneasy relationship between Japan and the PRC, and latent animosities between the two Koreas, there were also fears that a US military withdrawal would lead to regional instability. Together with Japan, many Southeast Asian states were uncertain of China’s strategic intentions and were concerned about the potential of its military capabilities and their application to the South China Sea territorial disputes, particularly over the Spratly Islands. Even a former Commander-in-Chief of the US Pacific Command acknowledged the need for “regional dialogues where we engage China, together with others, to fathom its intentions and to ease our misperception.”7 Hence, it could be argued that the ARF was formed in order to allow China to participate in consultations on regional security. The “geographical footprint” on which the ARF is supposed to focus its attention covers Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania.8 However, at the second

44

China’s approaches to the ARF

ARF meeting in Brunei in 1995, as a result of a compromise between the PRC and the USA, it was agreed upon that ASEAN would constitute the “primary driving force” of the ARF, and that decisions of the forum would be made through consensus.9 Consequently, the ARF mode of operation has reflected the “ASEAN Way” of conflict management and security cooperation that is informal, incremental, and consensus-based, and that rests on the basis of non-intervention in states’ domestic affairs and avoidance of direct confrontation in the forum’s deliberations, to prevent cooperation in other areas from being disrupted. In line with the “ASEAN Way” and China’s preference, ARF participants have made no attempts to impose obligations or timetables on one another. Rather, the emphasis has always been to start and continue a dialogue, help parties gain trust and confidence in one another, encourage transparency on security issues, and work toward achieving consensus gradually among member states. In place of legally binding commitments or sanctions, the grouping tries to change the incentives for cooperative behavior by increasing the risk of embarrassment for countries that fail to meet the expectations of their partners.10 The essential idea behind the ARF is that the process of dialoguing should lead to socialization of member states’ behavior, which, in turn, ought to result in the dissolution of conflicts of interests. This linkage, though utterly possible, has yet to be proven. As the ARF was never intended to be a system of collective security, there are no mechanisms of mutual assistance in the case of outside attack, or even formal sanctions if a fellow member of the ARF acts aggressively.11 At the forum’s founding, the Keating government of Australia had pressed for a more extensive institutional structure, including exchanges on strategic perceptions, a regional security studies center, a regional arms register, and regional maritime safety and surveillance cooperation agreements,12 but this was not well-received, particularly by Asian countries, which feared their potentially intrusive aspects. Because the threats perceived, military doctrines and C3I (Command, Control, Communications, and Information) systems of ARF countries are so vastly different from one another, there has never been a military exercise involving all member states of the ARF. In fact, the ARF contains within its membership separate military arrangements, such as the “Five-Power Defense Arrangement” between Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom (UK), bilateral treaty alliances between the USA and Japan, South Korea and Thailand, and the US-Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement. However, at a minimum, the ARF does provide its members with a venue to discuss and understand one another’s security concerns. Perhaps its greatest achievement is to have provided such an appealing forum for security discussions that its members continued to meet for rounds of talks 15 years after its inaugural session.

How structured or institutionalized is the ARF? Beginning with 18 members, the ARF is now a large organization of 26 states spanning the continents of Asia, Oceania, North America, and Europe. The ARF is born out of the “postministerial conferences” (PMCs) held immediately after the annual meetings of ASEAN foreign ministers, in which the ministers met as

China’s approaches to the ARF

45

a group with their counterparts from ASEAN’s “dialogue partners.” It was agreed at the ASEAN meeting in Singapore in 1993 to set up the ARF through which participating governments would undertake to work on political and security cooperation. The Forum’s first meeting took place at the ASEAN PMC in 1994 in Bangkok. The ARF now brings together the foreign ministers of all 10 member states of ASEAN, four Asia-Pacific powers – Russia, the PRC, the USA and Japan, plus the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, India, South Korea, North Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan, East Timor, and since July 2006, Bangladesh, to discuss regional security affairs. ARF annual meetings are typically held in July or August. A month or two before every such meeting, there will be an ARF Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM) to prepare the agenda for discussion by the Foreign Ministers.13 Ideas and inputs for official ARF (“Track One”) consideration are generated by (“Track Two”) security research bodies such as the national committees of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) and the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN ISIS). The Chair of ASEAN, which rotates on an annual basis, serves concurrently as the Chair of the ARF. Since 2000, he may call on the advice of notables on an ARF Register of Experts/ Eminent Persons, who are nominated by member states. The ARF Chair now has the right to place topics on the Forum agenda for official discussion, but neither he nor the ARF as a whole has the capacity for independent action. The ARF has no secretariat or staff of its own. At the Eleventh ARF Ministerial Meeting in July 2004, it was agreed that an ARF Unit comprising only ASEAN officials was to be established within the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta.14 This ARF Unit would have four primary functions i) to support the ARF Chair in interacting with other regional and international organizations, defense officials’ dialogues, and Track II organizations; ii) to function as a depository of ARF documents or papers; iii) to manage an ARF database or registry; and iv) to provide secretarial services and administrative support for ARF meetings at various levels.15 The small staff of the ARF Unit is made up of officials seconded from the ASEAN Secretariat or individual ASEAN governments.16 Most work concerning the ARF is still done by the relevant departments in the foreign ministries of the member states. The ARF also does not have a founding charter. As outlined in the ARF Concept Paper, adopted at the second ARF meeting in Brunei in 1995, its official agenda consists of three sequential stages, starting with Confidence-building Measures (CBMs), pressing on to Preventive Diplomacy (PD), and culminating in conflict resolution agreements. Therefore, the foundation of the ARF process is confidence-building at Stage 1, to create a spiral of trust among ARF countries, at the heart of which is transparency in arms acquisition, defense budgeting, and military strength and intention.17 In 1997, the ARF introduced an annual meeting of the Heads of Defense Colleges in the Asia-Pacific region that has expanded to include defense officials since 2004, and since 2000, members’ defense policy statements are published as the Annual Security Outlook (ASO).18 An ARF “Intersessional Support Group on Confidence-building Measures” (ISG-CBM) was established in 1995 to promote dialogue on security issues

46

China’s approaches to the ARF

affecting the region, encourage members to submit a defense policy statement to the ARF annually, support contacts and exchanges among high-ranking defense staff colleagues, and endorse participation in the UN Register of Conventional Arms.19 Two ISG meetings on CBMs are held once a year. Ad hoc Intersessional Meetings (ISMs) on Peacekeeping Operations were held between 1995 and 1997 to promote an exchange of information on UN Peacekeeping and training of personnel for these operations.20 Since 1997, ISMs on Disaster Relief have taken place, and since 2002, ISMs on Counter-Terrorism and International Crime have been held.21 An ISM on Maritime Security and another ISM on Non-Proliferation and Disarmament were inaugurated in 2009.22 ISGs and ISMs are co-chaired by one ASEAN and one or two non-ASEAN countries. At the “Track II” level, occasional workshops or seminars on CBMs, peacekeeping operations, searchand-rescue missions, and civil-military operations involving experts and officials from relevant government ministries have also been organized. Stage 2 of the ARF’s evolution, PD, would include negotiation, enquiry, mediation and conciliation, but apparently not coercive measures, sanctions, or military deployments, which are implicitly ruled out through adoption of the “ASEAN Way” of conflict management.23 After years of debate, ministers to the Eighth ARF meeting in Hanoi in July 2001 finally agreed on a working definition of PD, and the PRC relented at the Twelfth ARF meeting in Vientiane in July 2005 to the replacement of the ISG on CBM with an ISG on CBM and PD, with its first meeting involving a Defense Officials’ Dialogue (DoD) in Hawaii in October 2005. DoDs have since been held in tandem with, but also separately from, ISG meetings on CBM and PD. However, due to resistance from China and ASEAN, all intrastate disputes and humanitarian contingencies were excluded from the scope of PD.24 There is no timetable for Stage 3 to materialize. In terms of structure and development, much like APEC, the ARF has strongly reflected the preferences of the most reluctant countries. To reduce the risk of any concerted effort by powerful member states with their own agenda to constrain their freedom of action, the PRC and ASEAN have ensured that the institutionalization of the ARF has been kept to a minimum. This is akin to their reasoning and role-playing in APEC. Hence, the ARF has remained a forum for its member states to reduce uncertainty by exchanging information through dialogue, build confidence, signal concern, and issue public statements of agreement on their lowest common objectives, almost entirely dealing with military transparency. However, although more serious actions contemplated will require greater institutionalization and some form of enforcement mechanism, the present unspecific and weakly structured nature of the ARF also makes defection unnecessary and entrapment unlikely, as the cost of commitment is next to negligible.

What are the shared interests, norms and threats among ARF member states? Aside from a general aversion to international crises and regional instability, member states of the ARF do not share a common interest, norm or threat to any

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47

extent, nor ways of handling security concerns, that would have informed a joint purpose for the organization. Across the Asia-Pacific region, national governments hold different views about one another and on how best to manage future security. The PRC distrusts the USA and Japan, particularly over their prospective roles in the Taiwan Straits, and this sentiment is reciprocated by them. The USA does not intend to trade its bilateral security arrangements in East Asia for any real ARF-style multilateralism. Since the mid-1990s, the US government has strengthened its security arrangement with Japan, concluded a Visiting Forces Agreement with the Philippines that would allow US troops to be deployed in that country, and secured docking rights for its aircraft carriers at Singapore’s Changi naval base. Perceiving the US military presence as a stabilizing force in the region, most East Asian countries outside the PRC and North Korea would rather see a multilateral security architecture that is led by the USA. Japan has yet to dispel mistrust on the part of the Chinese, Koreans, and Southeast Asians over how the Japanese perceive their own conduct during the Second World War. Victims of past Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia view an independent strategic posture for Japan with as much concern as they do the potentially destabilizing effects of China’s growing economic and military strength and influence for the region. Japan, on the other hand, saw the ARF as a prime collective arena to pressure China into greater military transparency.25 Reflecting the balance of security mistrust and suspicion between the PRC and the USA, and Japan’s desire to craft a multilateral arrangement to build confidence and security in the Asia-Pacific region and increase its influence in the region, all three major players seem content to allow ASEAN to navigate among their interests and remain in the “driving seat” of the ARF. At the second meeting of the Forum in 1995, members agreed that “the ARF shall move at a pace comfortable to all participants.”26 Indeed, although the gradual, consensual, and non-binding “ASEAN Way” offered by the ARF has been criticized for contributing to ineffective management of security issues by the Forum, it was clearly the only mode acceptable to the PRC, given that a major unstated purpose of the ARF was to engage this regional behemoth. The ARF does not constrain the ability of state elites to make national policies on matters relating to security according to their own agenda. Despite counsel to the contrary by North American, Australasian and European members, most Asian ARF states are determined to proceed with an agenda only gradually, in an ad hoc approach, and without agreeing to binding commitments. The ARF is supposed to discuss and suggest measures to deal with potential security threats to the Asia-Pacific region. Instead, the issue of North Korean de-nuclearization is dealt with through the “Six-Party Talks” (6PT) constituted by North Korea, South Korea, the USA, PRC, Japan and Russia. The territorial disputes over the islands of Senkaku/Diaoyu, Takeshima/Tokdo, and the Northern Territories/Southern Kurile between Japan and the PRC, South Korea and Russia, respectively, are dealt with through bilateral negotiations, conducted intermittently. The territorial disputes over the South China Sea islands are dealt with through negotiations among the Southeast Asian claimants themselves within

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China’s approaches to the ARF

ASEAN, and between the PRC and ASEAN as a whole, which arrived at a Declaration of Conduct on the South China Sea in 2002, whereby each party affirmed the norms of restraint, non-use of force, and peaceful settlement of conflict in handling its disputes with other claimants over the South China Sea islands. India’s nuclear program is dealt with by the USA on a bilateral basis. The ARF has exercised no restraining influence on the levels of arms expenditure by member states, nor the terrorist attacks and bombings carried out in Southeast Asian countries. The ARF has fared no better dealing with threats to non-state or human security. When violence erupted in East Timor following its referendum on independence from Indonesia in August 1999, the ARF failed to respond to the crisis as a group, and concerns over issues of national sovereignty dictated that it was not until Indonesia had consented to an international peacekeeping force in East Timor that several ASEAN countries followed Australia’s lead to contribute troops. Constrained by the doctrine of non-intervention, the ARF again failed to come together as a group when East Timor, by then a fellow member state, was rocked by mutineer soldiers and marauding rioters in June 2006, and Australia had again to take the lead in introducing peacekeepers. As the ARF consists of all the great and potentially great powers of the international system engaged in mutual “constrainment,” there is little by way of a common threat to create organizational unity, or even the impression of it, much less any pressure from the ARF on member states to define or redefine their national interests, especially on security questions.27 Declaratory CBMs are acceptable, but only to the extent that they are conducted on a voluntary basis and states can maintain their control over information to be disclosed.28 As to PD, the USA, Australia and Canada were unhappy that its applicability should be restricted to interstate issues, particularly as the USA has pushed the group to back its “global war on terrorism” since September 11, 2001, chiefly in the way of blocking the financing of terrorism and strengthening border controls.29 However, promoting a PD agenda would require consensus within the ARF in line with the “ASEAN Way,” and the activist countries have yet to surmount opposition from China and the ASEAN states, which fear that applying PD to intrastate conflicts might allow outsiders to intervene in security problems that these countries perceive as pertaining to their internal and sovereign affairs, such as the Taiwan Straits for China, and the South China Sea disputes. PD, if applied, would also contradict ASEAN’s preference for conflict avoidance and China’s adherence to its “Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence.” It seems justified to paraphrase the late Gerald Segal, in observing that the ARF is not useless, only far from essential.30

The PRC’s roles in the ARF Dissimilar interests with other countries, fears of having its freedom of action constrained and norms of sovereignty and non-interference held back the PRC’s ability and willingness to act in the ARF. Consequently, because of the PRC’s

China’s approaches to the ARF

49

principal obstructionist or passive role, the ARF’s development has slowed down and drifted. Initially reluctant, the PRC agreed to join the ARF because, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen incident, it felt the need to establish its credentials as a responsible international actor, a force for peace, and a good neighbor. China participated in the ARF also because it believed that it could not risk confirming the fears or anxieties of its neighbors, who might perceive its “peaceful rise” as threatening and try to gang up in a regional security institution against the country. Also, as many ASEAN members had given moral support to Beijing when Washington accused it of human rights violations, unfair labor practices, and disregarding the principle of free and fair markets, the PRC felt obliged to join the ARF on ASEAN’s invitation. The PRC was also wary of being left out of a regional security organization that included major Asia-Pacific rivals like the USA and Japan. At the second meeting, members agreed that “the ARF shall move at a pace comfortable to all participants.”31 Indeed, the gradual, consensual, and nonbinding approach offered by the ARF and adapted from the “ASEAN Way” was the only one that would be acceptable to the PRC. The PRC’s ruling elite feels not only militarily vulnerable to a prospective US policy of containment in the guise of engaging China, but also threatened by US attempts to “socialize” the Chinese people to its democratic political values. As China fears US attempts to dominate the region or ideologically alter China into a shape desired by the West, an ARF in which the USA and its Western allies set the pace or agenda would have been unacceptable to the PRC. As such, the PRC has ensured that the institutionalization of the ARF has been kept to a minimum, to reduce the risk of any concerted effort to constrain its freedom of action. In the beginning, China even objected to the establishment of ARF intersessional working groups, but subsequently offered to co-chair an ISG on confidence-building methods with the Philippines in 1997.32 The PRC has dragged its feet on moving forward from confidence-building to preventive diplomacy over the non-interference principle, and opposed exploring conflict resolution approaches altogether.33 It was PRC officials who, worried about the implications of possible foreign intervention in its domestic affairs, territorial disputes or bilateral relations, pressed for a change in describing Stage 3 of ARF’s evolution, from “development of conflict resolution mechanisms” to “elaboration of approaches to conflicts.” China also objected to the use of the more permanent-sounding “working groups” to describe the ad hoc intersessional meetings (ISMs) and to having more than two ISG meetings per year.34 The PRC is concerned that the later stages of the ARF process, if adopted, would legitimize the involvement of third parties in pre-empting or resolving a crisis, which China, with existing boundary disputes and irredentist claim over Taiwan, would prefer to settle on its own terms without undue external involvement. There is no gainsaying the fact that China’s rising power has been the most central issue facing countries in the Asia-Pacific region since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, a major unstated purpose of the ARF is to engage the PRC, which

50

China’s approaches to the ARF

neither ASEAN nor Japan wants to do or feels capable of doing by itself, but has to bring in the USA and other countries in the Asia-Pacific. Although the ARF was perceived by ASEAN as a tool for engaging China, or “socializing” it into the international community by changing its threat perceptions, through its participation in an embryonic security regime and respect for its albeit minimal rules and interests, Indonesia and Singapore were apprehensive enough of China’s rise that they supported giving India the status of an ASEAN dialogue partner,35 as a prelude to India’s entry into the ARF. Japan saw the ARF more as a prime collective arena to pressure China into greater military transparency.36 Still, as a safe-guard, the Japanese government saw to it that the US-Japan Mutual Defense Pact was not merely renewed, but actually strengthened, in 1996, with a major intention of the reinforced pact being to prepare for coordination with the USA in the eventuality of a PRC attack on Taiwan. The PRC has always claimed that it has “indisputable” sovereignty over the whole of the South China Seas. In February 1992, the Standing Committee of the PRC National People’s Congress approved a law on territorial waters and contiguous areas, which reaffirmed the PRC’s claims to the disputed South China Sea islands and the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea that are also claimed by Japan and Taiwan, and asserted a legal right to enforce its sovereignty claims by force. In what may be considered one of the very few concrete successes of the forum, at the second ARF meeting in 1995, shortly after China’s seizure of Mischief Reef in the disputed Spratlys and as a result of pressure from Japan, Australia and several ASEAN states, China agreed to pursue a peaceful solution to the South China Sea dispute in accordance with international maritime law and has since allowed the issue to be raised at the ARF. Since then, the PRC has generally not sought to upset the regional order, but that is due to fears of a head-long clash with the USA, alienating ASEAN with its memory of China as an assertive hegemon, or provoking Japan to adopt an assertive security posture, challenges that China is as yet unable or unwilling to face, rather than any norms or standards promoted by the ARF. Unsurprisingly, China has opposed setting up an ISM to examine sovereignty claims in the South China Sea.37 The PRC has also cleverly perceived the ARF as a vehicle for promoting multipolarity in the post-Cold War Asia-Pacific order to diffuse America’s hegemonic status in the region. In the early years of the ARF, reflecting tensions in the uneasy relations between the PRC and the USA, the PRC has tried to use the multilateral approaches to security offered by the ARF to undermine US bilateral alliances in Asia, particularly the strengthened US-Japan alliance, by describing them, most notably at the ISG-CBM meeting in Beijing in March 1997, as “Cold War relics” and questioning their continued appropriateness.38 The PRC has also played on anti-Western sentiments in Southeast Asian countries resentful of US lecturing on democracy, human rights, environmental protection, trade protection, or intellectual property rights protection. India’s participation in the ARF, it turned out, was also supported by the PRC, which favors multipolarity in the Asia-Pacific.39 To demonstrate its goodwill to ASEAN but also to divide the organization from the USA, the PRC has voiced support for the Southeast Asian

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Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ), which assured ASEAN countries that the PRC would not station or deploy nuclear weapons on or around the contested islands and reefs in the South China Sea, which the USA, fearing restriction on navigational rights of its nuclear-armed warships, has yet to do.40 China’s seizure of the disputed Mischief Reef in February 1995, conduct of military exercises in the Taiwan Straits in March 1996, and more recent construction of oil platforms for test drillings in an area of the East China Sea, which is under dispute with Japan, were assertive actions that have only served to undermine the premises of confidence and trust building on which the ARF is based. As a sign of distrust and rivalry between China and Japan, a Japanese proposal to address the problem of piracy through joint action by local states involving the Japanese coast guard within the rubric of the ARF was opposed by China.41 Serious disagreements have erupted between China and the USA and its allies over proposals for notification of, and observers to, Chinese military exercises.42 China still feels that it might have to face a prospective policy of containment by the USA, and so although it proposed at the 2005 ARF meeting that defense ministers should also attend such meetings in future to create trust and confidence among member states,43 it does not feel that it is strong enough to afford to be too transparent with its military establishment, strength, or posture. Member states of the ARF are less than trustful of one another, have mixed relations with the PRC, and do not share common objectives in the organization. As a result, the PRC wants to constrain the USA and its friends and allies within the ARF from driving the agenda of the organization, the USA wants to do likewise with the PRC, and both powers would like to increase their influence with the countries of ASEAN, recognized by both as the hub of the ARF. Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs considers the ARF as a potentially useful tool for constraining China,44 particularly as relations between China and Japan have taken a turn for the worse in recent years, before returning somewhat to an even keel. In a very real sense, the PRC’s participation in the ARF reflects its desire to monitor and impede a fledgling multilateral security organization for the AsiaPacific that it fears will link together the separate US military alliances and agreements with Japan, Australia, South Korea, and several Southeast Asians into a network that would constrain a larger Chinese military role or influence in the China Seas or Western Pacific, and enable the USA to quickly move to a containment posture if necessary. ASEAN’s mode of conduct for regulating interstate relations is principally based on respect for national sovereignty and commitment to the non-use of force to resolve disagreements, which are encoded as the cardinal principles of the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC). Thinking along similar lines, the PRC government has always done its best to try and muffle or deflect criticisms of the human rights record of its Myanmarese counterpart or any other Southeast Asian country. As Myanmar is very dependent on China’s military assistance, trade, and aid, if the country continues to be ostracized by the West, Myanmar could tilt even more toward China, and that country is strategically important if China wants to become active in the Indian Ocean.45 In making

52

China’s approaches to the ARF

China feel safe, Southeast Asia, whether as part of the ARF or on its own, has a rightful place as a cornerstone of a larger East Asian arc of security that stretches from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. Yet, although it is the ARF’s titular “core”, ASEAN does not have the material power or the collective will to set the security agenda for the major powers; neither can it reconcile differences among them. ASEAN’s values and inadequacies are thus attractive enough for the PRC to sign on to the TAC in December 2003 and repeatedly voice its support for ASEAN to remain in the ARF’s “driver’s seat.” Accordingly, the PRC has opposed either widening the Chair of the ARF into a council or allowing a non-ASEAN member to hold the seat, and has rejected suggestions for a permanent and autonomous ARF secretariat.46 This accords well with ASEAN’s position, as the grouping is afraid of losing its relevance and influence on becoming part of a larger arrangement with other more powerful players. As China would rather leave the Forum than accept decisions that will, in the view of its leaders, either impinge too heavily on its national interest or lead to unwarranted interference in its domestic affairs, the incentive of obedience within the ARF can only come from peer pressure or persuasion.47 In the eventuality of a Chinese assertion of hegemony in the East Asia-Western Pacific region, the ARF may not have the sufficient incentives and certainly not the necessary resolve as a whole to counter it. More than anything else, the ARF is about attempts at fostering and sustaining security dialogue in an inclusive forum despite the checkered history of bilateral relations among certain members,48 and China seems very happy to see it remain this way. Perhaps the most serious drawback for any attempt at instituting a more concrete operating structure for the ARF is that the forum represents a secondary or fall-back position for the bilateral-first foreign and security policies of both the USA and the PRC, especially in terms of relations between the two major countries, whereas ASEAN already constitutes a bloc within the forum. Although China has co-chaired an ISM on Disaster Relief with Indonesia and another ISM on Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime with Brunei in 2006–2007, and is co-chairing the inaugural ISM on Non-Proliferation and Disarmament with Singapore and the USA in 2009–2010, it is still too early to tell if so doing represents either a shift in priority or policy or both for that country.49 China’s participation in the ISMs of the ARF demonstrates that it is far less suspicious of multilateral security arrangements than even 10 years ago, but its comfort level for participating in regional institutions, and hence its behavior in these organizations, still depends on its ability to maximize its relative power, interest, and autonomy within these bodies. In this sense, China has been able to maximize principally its power by participating in the ASEAN + China Forum, its interest by hosting the 6PT, its autonomy by crafting the CPIC Forum, and all three aspects by initiating and driving the Shanghai Five grouping and subsequently SCO, but it is within the ARF that China has felt constrained by powerful countries with their own very different interests.

China’s approaches to the ARF

53

Future developments of the ARF The ARF has continued to avoid discussing contentious issues, dealing with specific themes relating to regional security challenges, or adopting a more problem-solving mindset, despite advice to the contrary.50 Contributions to the ASO have remained voluntary. The ISG and ISM meetings have been little more than occasions for participants to discourse on every conceivable notion of security and reiterate the concerns expressed at the previous ARF general meeting. The defense ministers’ meeting that China proposed has taken place annually since 2006, but upon ASEAN’s insistence, within the rubric of the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meetings (ADMM) with its dialogue partners, known as ADMM-Plus.51 The ARF never held a summit of heads-of-state. At best, it would remain principally an annual gathering for foreign ministers from Asia-Pacific countries to talk security. (In this sense, perhaps APEC might even be a better medium to discuss and decide on security matters, if that ever becomes an important focus of the forum, as there is an annual meeting of heads of states or governments.) The ARF risks becoming defunct if participants feel that there is no meaningful role left for the organization except to repeat its exhortation down the years in encouraging member states to resolve whatever disputes they have with one another peaceably. It is perhaps with this consideration in mind, more so than the ostensible reason of having to attend to disturbances in the Middle East, that caused the former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to give both the 2005 and 2007 ARF ministerial gatherings a miss. Japan’s initial enthusiasm in promoting the ARF has diminished significantly, disappointed that the Forum has failed to promote concrete cooperative security measures or address traditional military security issues of concern to Japan.52 The 2006 ARF meeting retracted a draft statement condemning North Korea for its missile firings that July into the Sea of Japan, when its foreign minister threatened to withdraw his country from the group.53 North Korea, a major concern for the ARF because of its nuclear weapons program, participates only sporadically in the forum’s meetings. At the 2007 ARF meeting, to avoid controversy, Christopher Hill, the chief US negotiator at the 6PT flatly said that the ARF is not the appropriate forum to discuss nuclear negotiations between the USA and North Korea.54 The ARF may not hold together if the US and its treaty allies, or the PRC and its authoritarian friends, try to push their own security agenda on the forum to the point of excluding any meaningful participation from the other side, or take control of the organization by elbowing ASEAN aside. Indeed, the USA has in the past floated the idea of creating a separate regional security dialogue mechanism for Northeast Asia, to include the USA, Japan, and South Korea.55 There is already a mutual defense treaty signed by Japan and Australia in March 2007, which was reportedly encouraged by the USA.56 On the sidelines of the APEC leaders’ meeting in September 2007, the US president met with the prime ministers of Japan and Australia to discuss greater military cooperation, while warships from these three countries, plus those from India and Singapore, were training

54

China’s approaches to the ARF

together in the Indian Ocean. These actions were criticized by China as moves by the USA and its friends and allies to gang up on it.57 The (sub-optimal) equilibrium of all these interactions, or the lack of them, is to let the ARF remain an arena for contact and socialization among states, and function, in the words of an ARF observer, as an indefinite “brewery of norms,”58 that will hopefully lead to the distillation and spillover of trust and goodwill.

5

China’s participation in Shanghai Five and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

APEC and ARF are consultative groupings where non-binding decisions are reached gradually by consensus. Both may be regarded as large trans-Pacific or trans-regional settings where the Chinese were principally concerned about seeking a “voice” in policy consultations, and in many aspects, working to preclude other participants from impinging on China’s political, economic, and security interests. After participating, albeit defensively for a number of years, the Chinese government became very active in facilitating the formation and development of new associations that would reinforce a larger process of collaboration and accommodation between Beijing and its geographically contiguous AsiaPacific region, and pursue closer comprehensive interdependence with its neighbors, even to the point of excluding Western states. Perhaps the most notable of these arrangements is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a regional security organization of states.

Characteristics of the SCO as a regional security organization for Central Asia/Eurasia If a loosely structured process-oriented security dialogue arrangement is an appropriate description of the ARF, then the SCO resembles more of a tightly institutionalized result-seeking cooperative security organization. The SCO began in 1996 as the Shanghai Five process, with China on one side and Russia with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan on the other, engaging in negotiations to settle outstanding border disputes. The process was so named because the first meeting of the heads of the five states took place in Shanghai on April 26, 1996. This in turn led to confidence-building measures such as agreements to withdraw troops from, and limit the size of military maneuvers at, border areas with the PRC, and to give notification of, and allow observers at, military exercises. In annual meetings accompanying these talks, Chinese and Russian leaders came to an understanding about their mutual security interests in Central Asia. The joint pledge to oppose the “three evils” of separatism, terrorism, and Islamic extremism links Chinese security interests in Xinjiang, Russia’s fight against the rebels of Chechnya and the suppression of Islamist dissidents in the member states of Central Asia in a common cause. With the admission of Uzbekistan in

56

China’s participation in Shanghai Five and SCO

June 2001, the Shanghai Five process was renamed the SCO. The SCO has in recent years added to its core focus of fighting the “three evils” by advancing cooperation in conducting joint anti-terrorist military exercises, interdicting all types of cross-border smuggling, and promoting trade, investment, and infrastructure development among member states. The six SCO member states now have a total population of about 1.49 billion, almost a quarter of the Earth’s population. The SCO, and its predecessor, the Shanghai Five, is the first multilateral security organization largely initiated and promoted by China. It is also the only regional forum to date that carries the name of a Chinese city. China’s chief and original goal in the organization was to gain the cooperation of Central Asian governments, and to use the Russian government’s influence over them, to reduce the threat of Muslim Uighur separatism in Xinjiang, by denying the separatists cross-border funding, weapons, or sanctuary. Since then, the SCO has become the obvious tool for enhancing Chinese power and influence in Central Asia. The formation of the SCO represents Russia’s implicit recognition of the PRC’s legitimate role and rising influence in the Central Asian region where Soviet Russia once had exclusive control. To avoid the SCO from being sidelined by the post-September 11, 2001 US military presence in Central Asia, Beijing pushed hard for the institutionalization of an SCO secretariat and regional anti-terrorist center at the group’s 2002 St Petersburg summit in Russia.1 China has been cooperating ever more closely with SCO states in combating internal and external threats emanating from terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, and separatism. Between the time of the joint antiterrorist exercise of SCO militaries except Uzbekistan’s at the Chinese-Kazakh border in August 2003, and Sino-Russian naval maneuvers in the Yellow Sea in August 2005, the grouping effectively turned into a quasi-military bloc. In November 2005, a SCO Defense and Security Forum was hosted in Beijing, a 10-day event attended by high-ranking military officers from SCO member states as well as Mongolia, Pakistan, Iran, and India, which by-then already had observer status in the organization.2 In August 2007, a joint anti-terrorist exercise involving all member states of the SCO was held for the first time.

How structured or institutionalized is the SCO? The SCO is now an organization of six regular member states and four observer states that are geographically contiguous and share a common concern for Eurasian or Central Asian affairs. It is apparent that, as the SCO consolidates, it has become progressively institutionalized. The process of institutionalization actually began under the predecessor of the SCO, the Shanghai Five forum. The Shanghai Five mechanism for boundary demarcations and confidence-building between the Head of State of China, and those of its contiguous neighbors, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, was established with its first summit in Shanghai on April 26, 1996. On April 26, 1997, the heads of the five countries held a second meeting in Moscow and

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signed an “Agreement on Mutual Reduction of Military Forces” along China’s borders with Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. At the third summit in Kazakhstan’s Almaty on July 3, 1998, discussions expanded into non-border issues such as cooperation against the common threat of terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and separatism, which became the focus of the Shanghai Five, and subsequently the SCO. At the fourth summit in Kyrgyzstan’s Bishkek on August 24, 1999, the group agreed to institute constant meetings between officials of various government departments in member states. On July 5, 2000, the fifth Summit at Tajikistan’s Dushanbe mooted the idea of establishing a Shanghai Five Council of National Coordinators to provide organizational support for the purpose of fostering regularized coordination, and this agency was realized under the SCO. On June 15, 2001, when the SCO was founded in Shanghai, the “Shanghai Convention against Terrorism, Separatism and (Religious) Extremism” was signed by leaders of the member states, clearly defining the cardinal purpose of the organization. The leaders also adopted a flag and an emblem for the organization. The SCO Charter of 26 articles, which provides the purposes, principles, structure, and operational rules of the organization,3 was adopted by the second Heads of SCO States meeting in St Petersburg in June 2002. According to the Charter (Article 16), SCO bodies will take decisions by consensus, abstention notwithstanding, except for those on the suspension or expulsion of members from the organization, which will be taken by “consensus minus one vote of the member state concerned.”4 The supreme decision-making body of the SCO is the Council of Heads of States. It holds regular sessions once a year and makes decisions and issues instructions on all important matters pertaining to the organization. Below this level, the Council of Heads of Government holds regular meetings once a year to discuss strategies of multilateral cooperation and priorities for the organization, as well as to approve the budget for the following year. Lower down, one finds the mechanism of annual meetings of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Economy, Transport, Culture, Defense, Law Enforcement; Heads of Department on Extreme Measures (disaster coordination), and General Public Prosecutors, with that of the Ministers of Internal Affairs and Public Security added in 2009. Regular SCO functions are coordinated by a Council of National Coordinators of SCO member states meeting at least three times a year, and joint working groups under the charge of senior officials in the relevant ministries of member states tackle issues of common concern. The SCO has two permanent bodies – the SCO Secretariat, and the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS).5 Located in Beijing, the Secretariat works closely with the Council of National Coordinators in preparing drafts, making suggestions, implementing resolutions, and exercising budgetary supervision for the organization.6 The RATS is sited in Tashkent, and its staff is responsible for collecting and sharing intelligence on suspected terrorist groups operating in SCO member states. The Secretariat and the RATS were both inaugurated at the beginning of 2004.

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Both the SCO Secretary-General and the RATS Executive Committee Director are appointed by the Council of Heads of State for a period of three years. Members take turns according to the Russian alphabetical order of their country’s name to serve a three-year term. As the SCO’s chief administrative officer, the Secretary-General’s main duties are to coordinate the organization’s activities, oversee implementation of the decisions of the Council of Heads of State and other governing bodies of the SCO, and forward proposals to foster cooperation within the organization and further its international ties.7 The Secretary is assisted by four deputies in charge of political-security, economic-cultural, administrativelegal-budgetary and information analysis-media-external affairs.8 The SCO Heads of State meeting in 2004 established a council of permanent representatives from member states to exercise direct supervision over the activities of the RATS.9

What are the shared interests, norms and threats among SCO member states? Nothing like Article 16 of the SCO Charter, a regular Council of National Coordinators, or a supervisory council of permanent representatives as discussed in the above section exists in any of the institutionalization efforts of the other regional multilateral arrangements in which China is involved. This rather advanced institutional state of the SCO seems to reflect quite clearly the fact that member states of the organization, to a large extent, share certain common interests, norms, and threats, especially with regards to security concerns. The Dushanbe Declaration issued at the close of the fifth summit of Shanghai Five leaders confirmed the right of each state to choose its own path of political, economic, and public policy development, declared against intervention into the internal affairs of other states under the pretext of “humanitarian intervention” and “human rights protection,” and supported efforts by member states to protect the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and social stability of member states.10 This declaration, more than any other document, defines the norms of the Shanghai Five forum and the succeeding SCO. Although the SCO has stated that it is not a military alliance directed against any external parties,11 the leaderships of both China and Russia have since 1996 declared themselves to be in a strategic partnership against what they see as US “hegemonism,” “unipolarity,” and interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states. Russia is wary of American support for the regime changes in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan; whereas China opposes US arms sales to Taiwan. One may even go so far as to say that the SCO is an instrument for both China and Russia to jointly maintain their sphere of influence in Central Asia and assert themselves as alternatives to US dominance in international and Central Asian affairs. The first joint military maneuvers involving all SCO members from August 9 to 17, 2007, with the bulk of the military forces coming from Russia and China, led to speculation that the organization is contemplating turning itself into a rival military bloc to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

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Central Asian states also wish to garner support from Russia and China to help them fight against local Islamic groups that advocate using violence to achieve fundamentalist goals of establishing a Central Asian caliphate, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (renamed the Islamic Movement of Turkistan in 2002) and the Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and to help stop the infiltration of Al-Qaeda elements from Afghanistan. The states believe that these aims could be achieved in part by joining first the Shanghai Five, and subsequently the SCO. Since 2002, the Hizb-ut-Tahrir has widened its area of activities from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Southern Kyrgyzstan, to Northern Kyrgyzstan and Southern Kazakhstan.12 Even after the overthrow of President Askar Akayev in March 2005, the new leadership of Kyrgyzstan apparently saw enough value in the SCO that it did not contemplate withdrawing from the organization. This could also be because the Hizb-ut-Tahrir posed a threat to the new government by supporting candidates, in some cases successfully, in elections to Kyrgyzstan’s local and national assemblies in 2005, to the extent that a reported one-third of local assemblymen in Southern Kyrgyzstan have ties to the underground organization.13 Cooperation against terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and separatism, the interrelated “three evils” identified by the Shanghai Five as early as 1998 as its core mission, has remained the focus of SCO governments. However, recognizing that poverty is a major source of instability in Central Asia and China’s Xinjiang, the SCO has since its 2003 summit at Moscow expanded to economic cooperation in the form of encouraging trade, investment, and infrastructure development among member countries.14 The SCO has to date carried out at least 127 projects in areas of customs cooperation, cross-border transportation, laws and regulations harmonization, energy exploitation and pipeline development, and road and railway construction.15 To further SCO cooperation, especially in the areas of non-traditional security, leaders at the fourth SCO annual summit at Tashkent in June 2004 signed an agreement to tighten up border customs around Afghanistan to enforce general policing of the smuggling of illicit arms, ammunition, explosives, and narcotics.16 The focus of the group has since broadened to include taking joint measures to halt cross-border organized international crime, illegal immigration, and mercenary activities.17 In 2004, the SCO created a team of observers to monitor presidential and other elections in member states. Subsequently, the SCO heads of government meeting in October 2005 in Moscow signed agreements to establish a mechanism for providing mutual aid and their quick deployment to member states for disaster relief and other emergencies,18 and create a SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group composed of members of the SCO Secretariat Staff and senior diplomats from Afghan embassies in SCO states.19 Western and US criticisms of Uzbekistan President Ismail Karimov’s violent suppression of the rebellion in Andijan, Eastern Uzbekistan, in May 2005, an action that none of the other SCO countries condemned, spread fear and suspicion throughout Central Asia that the USA was supporting dissidents to subvert or overthrow the current ruling regimes in the region. Reflecting anti-USA feelings among the SCO member states, the joint declaration at the end of the

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July 2005 summit at Kazakhstan’s Astana called for a timetable for the withdrawal of US-led anti-terrorist forces in Afghanistan and cessation of leased military facilities in SCO countries, citing the end of large-scale operations against terrorism in Afghanistan.20 Accordingly, the Uzbek government gave US forces 180 days from July 29, 2005 to evict its Karshi-Khanabad airbase,21 which was completed by the end of November. Kyrgyzstan only agreed to renew the US lease on its base there after greatly increasing the rent. The USA has approached its relations with Central Asian countries on bilateral terms, and did not treat the SCO states as members of a bloc when it negotiated for military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, requested over-flight permission from Tajikistan, and conducted military exercises with the armed forces of the three states within the rubric of the NATO “Partnership for Peace”. This strategy is designed to weaken the SCO by steering each target country’s foreign and military policies in the direction of individual arrangements reached with Washington. In order to limit further US attempts at wooing away the former Soviet Central Asian republics and asserting its influence in the region, both China and Russia continued their efforts to strengthen the SCO. US cancellation of aid for 2005 to Uzbekistan, due to its human rights record and widespread regional suspicion of American involvement in the overthrow of Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev and the Andijan riots, seemed to have made Central Asian governments believe that sticking closer to China and Russia would better ensure the longevity of their regimes. Beijing and Moscow have designed the SCO to preserve the current status quo and, unlike the USA or other Western countries, refrained from encouraging any market or democratic reforms. The grouping thus offers tangible benefits to its members.22 For Central Asian governments, Russia and China represented support without strings attached over issues such as human rights or democratic governance. For China, Russia’s Siberia and Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan, could provide the energy resources, principally oil and natural gas, to fuel its growing and rapidly industrializing economy. In return, China could provide them with a market for trade and a source of investment. Russia has come to see the SCO as a means to limit US influence in the Central Asian region that is strategically important to both itself and China. Iran, Pakistan, and India became observer members of the SCO at its 2005 summit, joining Mongolia, which was admitted the year before. The close relationship between China, Russia, and Iran may prove to be a major obstacle to American policy in the Central Asian region. China and Russia share similar diplomatic positions with regards to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, in wanting more time for negotiation and resisting Western demands for tougher action by the United Nations Security Council against that country. Neither Russia nor China wishes to see an already volatile Middle East further destabilized, and as a major petroleum importer, China has no desire to experience higher crude oil prices.

The PRC’s roles in the SCO As the PRC interacts comfortably with other members of the SCO, shared interests, fears, and norms also provide China with opportunities to set the agenda and

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drive the process of institutionalization for the SCO. Member states of the SCO are generally trustful of one another, have overall good relations with the PRC, and share its objectives in the organization, hence they are prepared to go with the PRC in setting the agenda, direction, and speed of the SCO. China considers its involvement in the SCO a “key point” of its foreign policy.23 The SCO, and its predecessor, the Shanghai Five, is the first multilateral security organization largely initiated and promoted by China, and with each passing year the SCO has become more of an instrument for enhancing Chinese strategic influence and economic power in Central Asia. Since Jiang Zemin became the first PRC Head of State to visit Central Asia in 1996,24 either the president or prime minister of China has visited the region at least once a year. As a result of the PRC’s role as the driving force, although counter-terrorism has remained a major focus of the SCO, the organization’s development has sped up and expanded in new directions. To avoid the SCO’s salient role in combating terrorism from being marginalized by the post-September 11, 2001 US military presence in Central Asia, Beijing argued compellingly for the creation of a SCO regional anti-terrorist center at the 2002 St Petersburg summit.25 Since that summit, China has managed to pressure the group into taking a continuing stance against the deployment of the theater missile defense (TMD), for such a US missile shield would make China’s relatively small nuclear deterrent force obsolete. Further reflecting China’s instrumental role and influence, a permanent secretariat building entirely funded by the PRC was erected in Beijing in late 2003,26 with China providing the largest contingent in its staff of 30 secretaries, and the former Chinese ambassador to Russia, Zhang Deguang, was appointed as the first Secretary-General of the SCO. China has been cooperating ever more closely with SCO states in combating internal and external threats emanating from terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, and separatism. The military exercise between Chinese and Kyrgyz forces in October 2002, and the joint anti-terrorist exercise of SCO militaries, except that of Uzbekistan at the Chinese-Kazakh border in August 2003, effectively began the process of turning the grouping into a quasi-military bloc. China implicitly condoned the harsh actions of the Uzbek President in putting down the Andijan protests, with then-SCO Secretary-General Zhang from China calling the disturbance “a terror attack carried out by armed religious extremists.”27 Demonstrating the importance of China in his foreign policy calculations, Karimov took up an invitation to visit the Chinese capital only one week after quelling the riots back home. Reflecting China’s increasingly high priority in stabilizing Central Asia for its petroleum and natural gas resources, and the desire of Central Asian governments to diversify their countries’ economic and trade dependence on Russia, despite some unease on the part of their own merchants to the increasing numbers of Chinese traders in their midst, the Chinese leadership convinced the SCO to expand its focus from primarily counter-terrorism to economic cooperation.28 At the 2003 SCO annual meeting in Moscow, the Chinese president made a strong push for an early focus on building transport infrastructure throughout Eurasia.29

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Hu Jintao also said that China would set aside a special fund for the training of 1,500 people from other SCO countries within the following three years,30 chiefly in the areas of economic, scientific-technical and humanitarian cooperation. Most of the more than 120 projects engaged by the SCO in areas of customs cooperation, cross-border transportation, law and regulations harmonization, energy development, and road and railway construction involve China.31 China has even voiced the idea of a SCO Free Trade Area since 2005. By 2006, the volume of trade for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan with China was more or less on a par with their trade with Russia, with more than 90 percent accounted for in raw material.32 When Russia suggested admitting India as an observer, China agreed only if Pakistan and Iran were also admitted as observers at the same time.33 China would not allow its rapprochement with India to come at the expense of its traditionally close strategic partnership with Pakistan, as it is developing Pakistan’s Gwadar Harbor and modernizing its rail and road network with a view to joining it through the Karakorum Highway at Xinjiang’s Kashi (Kashgar) to another system of roads and railways from Central Asia into China. Hence, Iran, Pakistan, and India became observer members of the SCO at its 2005 summit, joining Mongolia, which was admitted the year before. If the relationship between China, Russia, and Iran gets closer, it may make the SCO more than an irritant to the USA, as China and Russia share similar positions with regards to Iran’s nuclear program, in resisting Western demands for moving beyond negotiations to tougher sanctions by the United Nations Security Council against Iran. Even when China voted for UN Security Council Resolution 1696 in July 2006, which demanded the suspension of Iranian enrichment activities on pain of sanctions, the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Company clinched a US$16 billion investment deal over natural gas fields in Iran.34 The increasing structural cohesiveness, multiplying purposes, and military preparedness of the SCO is demonstration that the PRC is not suspicious of institutionalized multilateral security organizations or getting involved in them per se. Rather, the Chinese authorities are particularly sensitive toward attempts to probe their military budget, doctrine, and battle order, especially by countries China does not really trust, and are apprehensive only if a regional security organization might become involved in the Taiwan issue, which the PRC considers a domestic affair that brooks no foreign interference. Although there are a few of these countries in the ARF, there are none in the SCO. If being more open about its political processes runs against the grain of traditional Chinese practices and the norms and conduct of a ruling communist party,35 then it is little wonder that the PRC leadership feels a lot more comfortable discussing sensitive issues and plugging its agenda with the national elites of the Central Asian states and Russia, which shares its authoritarian communist background, than with countries with more open political systems.

Table 5.1 Institutionalization of Shanghai Five vs. Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Meetings and Organs Shanghai Five

SCO

Summit level Head of State meeting till July 2000 (5x)

Head of State meeting till June 2009 (9x) Prime Minister meeting till October 2009 (8x) Meeting of Parliamentary Speakers till May 2006 (1x)

Ministerial level Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs till April 2001 (2x) Meeting of Ministers of Defense till March 2000 (1x)

Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs till May 2009 (12x) (three extraordinary) Meeting of Ministers of Defense till April 2009 (7x) Meeting of Ministers of Culture till April 2008 (5x) Meeting of Ministers of Economy and Tradetill September 2008 (7x) Meeting of Ministers of Transport till August 2004 (3x) Meeting of Ministers of Education till October 2006 (1x) Meeting of Ministers of Internal Affairs and Public Security till May 2009 (1x)

Committee / Agency/ Department level Heads of law-enforcement bodies and security Heads of law-enforcement bodies and security services (Bishkek group services (Bishkek group meeting) till May 2002 meeting) till November 1999 (1x) (2x) Meeting of Heads of Departments on prevention and elimination of emergency events (Extreme Measures) till June 2009 (4x) Meeting of General Public Prosecutors till September 2003 (2x) Meeting of the SCO Council of National Coordinators till April 2009 (23x) Meeting of the SCO RATS Council till March 2008 (11x) Meeting of the Heads of Supreme Courts till September 2006 (1x) Permanent staff Secretariat – Beijing, PRC Headed by Secretary-General Four Deputy Secretaries 30 Staff Members RATS – Tashkent, Uzbekistan Headed by Executive Director Permanent Representatives

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The SCO since its seventh summit and China’s relations with Russia The seventh summit meeting of the Council of Heads of Member States of the SCO was held on August 16, 2007, in Bishkek, capital city of Kyrgyzstan. This meeting was substantive in witnessing a definite shift of the organization’s priorities from combating terrorism, separatism, and Islamic fundamentalism in general to four specific aspects that had been discussed at previous SCO summits since 2004 but never highlighted until then – Afghanistan, membership qualifications, establishment of an energy club, and comprehensive military cooperation.

Afghanistan The resurgence of the militant Islamist Taliban in Afghanistan is worrying some SCO members, particularly Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, which share porous borders with that country.36 Consequently, the summit in Bishkek spotlighted security threats coming from Afghanistan following the less than successful military operations conducted by the USA and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since the end of 2001 to flush out the Taliban fighters from their mountain strongholds. The SCO resolved to address these problems with the authorities of Afghanistan through the SCO–Afghanistan Contact Group, as well as with those of Pakistan, where many Taliban fighters have sought refuge across the border from their own country. In the Bishkek Declaration, put out at the end of the summit, the Heads of State expressed concern over the threat of narcotics smuggling coming from Afghanistan and its destabilizing effect on Central Asia, and have called for the creation of an “anti-narcotics belt” around Afghanistan,37 without specifying yet the form that this cordon sanitaire should take. According to the World Drug Report, Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 percent of world illegal opium production, which is used to produce heroin.38 Then Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the SCO to host an international conference on Afghanistan with the aim of interdicting the drug trade and boosting stability there,39 which took place in Moscow on March 27, 2009.40 The narcotics problem with Afghanistan was in fact first raised at the Fourth SCO summit in June 2004 at the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, where an accord was achieved to tighten customs regimes bordering Afghanistan, improve anti-drug smuggling efforts, and develop and implement relief programs for poppy farmers in that country.41 Apparently, few results must have accrued from these labors to have the issues revisited repeatedly. This reflected in all likelihood the Afghan authorities’ inability to eradicate the drug situation in the country, as a result of their incomplete control over its territory. By stating in the Bishkek Declaration that SCO member states stand ready to participate in efforts to normalize the political situation in Afghanistan and develop economic cooperation with it,42 the SCO is putting the USA and the world on notice that it intends to arrogate for itself a larger role in Afghan affairs on the eventual reduction and departure of US and NATO troops.

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Membership The Presidents of Iran and Mongolia attended the summit, as did the Foreign Minister of Pakistan and the Gas and Oil Minister of India, all representing observer states in the SCO. The President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, who has attended SCO summits since 2004, the President of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, and United Nations Undersecretary-General Lynn Pascoe attended the summit as guests of the SCO. At the summit, both Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri, and Iran’s President, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, said that they wanted their respective countries to receive full membership in the SCO.43 However, at the previous summit meeting in 2006, the six SCO member states had already decided to place a temporary ban on the admission of new members,44 and officials from China and Russia have stated that new members will not be accepted at the present summit, saying that a mechanism for adding new members has not yet been worked out.45 The organization’s charter does not, at present, contain procedures for the inclusion of new members. If and when it does, Pakistan would seem like a natural candidate for SCO membership, as its government is also in the fight against terrorism. Bringing Iran fully into the SCO fold would firmly secure that country’s oil and natural gas supplies for China and allow China and Russia more influence over Iran’s foreign policy. However, Chinese and Russian leaders are concerned that extending membership to Iran would be read by the USA and the European Union (EU) as an unnecessarily provocative endorsement of Iran’s nuclear program, and it does not serve the interest of either China or Russia, at least at this moment, to embark on a collision course with the West. The attendance of Turkmenistan’s new President, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, marked the first time a leader from that country has ever participated in an SCO event. Berdymukhammedov became Turkmenistan’s President only in February 2007, two months after the death of his predecessor, Saparmurat “Turkmenbashi” Niyazov, under whom the country practiced a foreign policy of “positive neutrality” that prohibited it from joining any organization with a military or counter-terrorism aspect.46 If and when Turkmenistan expresses its desire to join the SCO, its request will very likely be honored, as the SCO was established to manage the affairs of Central Asia, and Turkmenistan is a state in the region. The mechanism for admitting new members may not have been devised yet, but a set of “Regulations on Observer Status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization” was promulgated at the conclusion of the summit. For an observer state or intergovernmental organization, perhaps the most interesting and relevant aspects of this set of rules are the rights to attend open meetings of the organization’s Heads of State Council, Council of the Heads of Government (Prime Ministers), Council of Foreign Ministers, and conferences of Heads of Ministries and Departments, and circulate through the SCO Secretary-General statements on issues of their concern.47 Although observers do not have the right to vote, and many meetings to decide the structure and policies of the organization take place behind closed doors, the “Regulations” will have the effect of opening up more

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avenues for inputs from observer states, and should be read as a sign of further maturation and institutionalization of the organization.

Energy One important reason why the SCO has been gaining clout and attention is that the association spans a region that is rich in oil and natural gas reserves. The President of oil-rich Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, stated that he believed the region’s Soviet-era network of gas and oil pipelines could form the basis for an Asian energy market, and told summit participants that a SCO Energy Club, as the core of an Asian energy strategy, should function in the context of a mechanism of meetings of energy ministers from SCO member and observer states.48 A strategy to ensure steady energy supply for SCO states was in fact first mooted at the Sixth SCO summit in Shanghai in June 2006. This SCO Energy Club would unite energy producing, consuming and transit countries in coordinating strategies with the aim of increasing energy security.49 In response, Iranian President Ahmadinejad stated that he was prepared to organize a meeting of SCO oil or energy ministers to discuss energy cooperation.50 An expanding trade in fuel could also give impetus to regional projects, particularly those relating to infrastructure such as the construction of roads, railways, and oil and gas pipelines. The Energy Club idea was well-received by the Chinese, for it could lessen China’s dependence on hydrocarbon imports from the volatile Middle East. Given the vagaries of Russia’s monopolistic and unpredictable foreign energy policies, Chinese interests in the energy resources of Central Asian states will provide them with new markets and new opportunities in attracting major foreign infrastructure investments. Although the US$700 million, 688-mile pipeline from Kazakhstan’s Atasu to Western China’s Alashankou had barely become operational in 2007 with an initial throughput of 10 million tons per annum,51 Kazakhstan committed itself to investing US$800 million between 2006 and 2008 in gas pipelines to boost exports from its Kenkiyak and Kumkol oil fields to China.52 China is also increasing the amount of oil it buys from Aktyubinsk or Aktobe in Western Kazakhstan by purchasing another US$1.9 billion of Kazakh oil reserves.53 Rising prosperity in Central Asia suits the Chinese just fine. Chinese leaders want the region both to be a steady source of hydrocarbon supply and a safe market for Chinese goods. During Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit to Bishkek ahead of the SCO summit, Kyrgyz Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev asked that a gas pipeline to be built from Turkmenistan, which is rich in natural gas, to China be allowed to pass through Kyrgyzstan, so that the country can diversify its present sole source of gas import from Uzbekistan.54 Under the terms of an agreement signed in April 2006, Turkmenistan will supply China with 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas per year by pipeline, beginning in 2009. This figure has since been raised to 40 bcm.55 In September 2006, China approved construction of a multibillion-dollar gas pipeline from the Amu Darya in Turkmenistan to its southern commercial metropolis of Guangzhou.56 In April 2007, Uzbekistan

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signed an agreement with China to jointly construct a natural gas pipeline to supply China with 30-40 bcm of gas within 30 years of 2010, by which time the pipeline, which will be joined to the Turkmenistan–Kazakhstan-China pipeline, should be operational.57 Aside from hydrocarbon, after Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai opened the country to foreign investment of natural resources in 2007, the China Metallurgical Group won the rights to develop the world’s largest undeveloped copper field at Anyak, for US$3.5 billion.58 This is demonstration of China’s increased role in a neighboring observer member state of the SCO. Russia is building its own network of oil and gas pipelines from Siberia to China. According to Dmitri Trenin, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, by creating an energy club for the SCO, Moscow is hoping to play up its role as principal supplier of oil and gas to China as the principal energy importer, and also raise Russia’s state-owned oil and gas company Gazprom’s stakes in Central Asia.59 The USA has long sought pipeline routes from Central Asia and the Caspian Sea via the Caucasus that would circumvent Russia and allow it to tap directly into Central Asia’s energy resources. If the SCO does agree to coordinate controls over the production, transportation, and export of hydrocarbon resources, it would certainly be to the interests of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan as major producers of oil and gas and China as a key consumer of these resources on which its phenomenal economic growth depends. However, so doing may well adversely affect the prices and quantities of Russian and Central Asian oil and gas that are piped to their Eastern and Central European customers, and thereby harm the relationship between the EU and the SCO. Hence, SCO hydrocarbon exporters will have to balance the fuel interests of both West and East.

Military On August 9, 2007, the SCO began military exercises involving some 6,500 soldiers from the organization’s six member states. Code-named “Peace Mission 2007,” this set of exercises is of the largest scale and longest duration conducted by the SCO to date. The nine days of live-firing drills, from August 9 to 17, took place in two phases. Phase One occurred in China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region where the Chiefs-of-Staff of the six participating military forces held discussions in the regional capital of Urumqi and gave orders for the exercise. Phase Two saw the exercise grounds moving to a Russian military base at Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains. For the exercise, the People’s Liberation Army of China dispatched a 1,600-member contingent, 32 Mi-17 and Z-9 helicopters, six heavy transport aircraft, eight attack aircraft, and a company of airborne troops.60 Russia mobilized 4,700 soldiers, 36 aircraft, Mi-8, Mi-24, and Mi-28N helicopters, and Su-25 fighters. Tajikistan and Kazakhstan each contributed 200 soldiers from paratrooper companies, Kyrgyzstan put in an air assault platoon, and Uzbekistan made available a batch of staff officers for the exercise.61 One of the main scenarios of the exercises involved retaking a town that has been overrun by militants. This is a scenario similar to threats faced by Russia in

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Chechnya. On the threats to security in the SCO countries, Russian Chief-of-Staff General Yury Baluyevsky cited terrorism, religious extremism, drug trafficking, organized crime, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and ensuring information security.62 “Peace Mission 2007” can also be regarded as a signal to the West that the SCO have the capacity to deal with both conventional and non-conventional threats, and may also be interpreted as a message by China and Russia to convince the governments of Central Asia to rely less on security assistance from the USA and its European allies in the future. According to China’s current ambassador to Russia, Liu Guchang, the most significant threats to China come from East Turkestan terrorist (or Xinjiang separatist) forces operating both within China and outside its borders (in Central Asia), of which he cited the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the East Turkestan Liberation Movement, the World Uygur Youth Congress, and the East Turkestan Information Center.63 Indeed, Chinese police reportedly killed 18 suspected terrorists, captured 17 others, and seized a cache of hand grenades in a raid on an alleged terrorist training camp operated by ETIM in Xinjiang as recently as January 2007. China believes the exercises would step up coordination among SCO members in fighting separatism, terrorism, and extremism in their countries,64 which in fact, was the original aim of the organization. By participating in the exercises, particularly in practicing to free “hostages” from their “captors” in a terrorist-held site, China was also rehearsing the security measures to take in the event of terrorist acts during the Beijing Olympic Games in August 2008. While the exercises were going on, the Seventh SCO summit took place outside Bishkek, just a few kilometers from the only remaining military base in a SCO country operated by the USA. To downplay speculation that the US facility at Manas might be used in a strike against Iran, an observer SCO member, the Kyrgyz foreign minister insisted that the terms of the lease agreement between Kyrgyzstan and the USA stipulated that the base cannot be used for any operations not related to military actions in Afghanistan.65 The state presidents who had attended the summit flew to Chelyabinsk to watch the final day of the biggest SCO military exercises ever. Putin used the occasion to announce that Russian strategic bombers would resume regular longrange patrols, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia reportedly paid most of the two billion rubles (∼US$78 million) that “Peace Mission 2007” cost,66 which, given the size of the exercise, seemed to be as much to counter terrorist activities as to assert and safeguard the interests of both Russia, and to a certain extent, China, in their common neighborhood. Along this vein, “Peace Mission 2007” may be regarded as a follow-up on “Peace Mission 2005,” a set of Sino-Russian joint military exercises that took place under the auspices of the SCO in August 2005 and featured naval maneuvers off Russia’s Vladivostok and amphibious landings on China’s Shandong Province. Putin also suggested that joint military exercises among SCO states should become a regular event,67 which, if realized, would greatly increase the degree of cooperation and interoperability among their armed forces. In July 2009, a combined army and air

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force “Peace Mission 2009” exercise was held between China and Russia involving about 1,300 soldiers on each side in China’s Taonan base in Jilin province and Russia’s Khabarovsk.68 Although the “Peace Mission 2007” military maneuvers in Russia were already winding down when the SCO leaders met, it was the first occasion in which a SCO military exercise was, in a sense, combined with a Heads of State summit, and where all the Heads of State of the SCO attended a set of war games together. With this, the political and military objectives of the organization seem to have come together to enable the group to turn into a security community should its member governments perceive such a need, despite frequent denials by SCO leaders. Putin appeared eager to court China’s support in steering the SCO toward a defense or security alliance. This came at the time when Moscow had serious disagreement with Washington over US plans to deploy missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. Whereas Russia might prefer to orientate the SCO more toward the security realm, China would like to promote greater economic cooperation within the organization, especially with respect to energy. As much as Chinese leaders desire good relations with other SCO partners, they want to minimize trouble in dealings with the USA, as the USA is among China’s most important trading partners and China wants the USA to discourage proindependence and anti-Chinese sentiments on Taiwan. However, they are not averse to letting Russia take the heat from the West at the moment, while they continue with their Bismarckian foreign policy strategy of carefully avoiding alienating the most powerful country in the world, which could conceivably put a stop to China’s economic and military rise.

Future developments of the SCO Doubters of SCO cohesiveness may point to competition for, or duplication of, the organization from the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEc) in the economic realm and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in the security realm.69 However, China is not yet a member of either the EurAsEc or the CSTO. China may yet propose a Eurasian customs union, common market or free trade area, linking together the SCO and the EurAsEc with itself included. In future, the SCO could work together with the CSTO in a complementary partnership for the security of the entirety of Eurasia, if and when China decides to take part in military exercises conducted under the rubric of the latter. Shortly after the summit, the SCO and CSTO signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on security matters, such as fighting terrorism, trans-national crime, and illegal drug trafficking.70 In the long term, strategic rivalry in Central Asia between China and Russia is a distinct possibility, as both these countries have asserted their domination or influence over the region at one time or another in the past, and all SCO countries except China are members of the Russian-led CSTO. However, in the foreseeable future, the SCO still represents priority multilateral foreign and security policy

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interests for the PRC, Russia, and the other member states concerned. Limiting and reducing both the US military presence and militant Islamist influence in Central Asia and Afghanistan, together with setting up a framework for energy security cooperation and maintaining a united front for the SCO vis-à-vis outsiders, seem to be major concerns for China and Russia. Since 1992, Japan has dispensed more than US$2.5 billion in grants, technical transfer, training, and loans to all five countries in Central Asia, including neutralist Turkmenistan. To counteract the burgeoning Chinese influence acted through the SCO in Central Asia, and minimize the chances that any discussion of the region’s future will come at the expense of Japan’s interest, in August 2004 the Japanese Foreign Minister initiated in Kazakhstan’s Astana what became an annual series of meetings with Central Asian counterparts to carry out as-yet unspecified joint programs to promote regional economic integration and hydrocarbon infrastructure development, in what is known as the “Central Asia Plus Japan Dialogue.”71 Japan’s decision to create an exclusive organization linking itself and the countries of Central Asia demonstrates its desire to have some presence in the region. Despite America’s vision of itself as the sole superpower, the USA will be increasingly compelled to be a team player with friendly or allied Asian states to meet the challenge of SCO cooperation in the political, economic, and security spheres on the Asian continent. The joint naval exercise involving the USA, Japan, Australia, Singapore, and India, an SCO observer that is trying to maintain the greatest degree of maneuverability in its foreign and security policies, in the Bay of Bengal in September 2007, although it has been months in the works and not planned in response to that year’s SCO exercise, may be read as a step in that direction. The USA still sees the SCO as more of an impediment to the exercise of American power and influence in Eurasia than a threat to its national interests, and SCO leaders have consistently denied that they are looking to set up a military or security alliance. To reduce the chances of such an alliance from materializing, the USA should take the interests of Russia and China into account when formulating and executing its foreign, military and energy policies. China received 94 percent of its major conventional weapons – Su-27 and Su-30 fighters, missile-armed submarines, destroyers equipped with supersonic anti-ship missiles, transport planes and tankers – from Russia in the five years to 2007, paying as much as US$2.5 billion a year, with Sino-Russian trade amounting to US$48 billion in 2007.72 Yet China has expressed interest in buying weapons from the USA and European countries. If US relations with Russia and China take a turn for the worse, because America is seen to be threatening their national security, destabilizing their border regions by showing sympathies to ethnic or religious separatist causes, or supporting dissident movements in their countries or those of the Central Asian states to overthrow or create difficulties for their governments, then it should be unsurprising if SCO turns out to become a NATO of the East, or a new version of the Warsaw Pact-cum-oil-and-gas-cartel. This would be threatening to the USA and the West indeed. Given the increasing connectedness in interactions and issue-areas among the SCO states, the next step in further institutionalizing and consolidating the

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organization might be to set up a tribunal of representatives from member states to interpret the provisions laid down in the founding charter of the group and to settle disputes between member states. Even if this move has not yet materialized, under certain conditions, the SCO is likely to become more cohesive with expanded mandates. These conditions are: i) Russia remains a major focus of Chinese foreign and security policy, and vice versa, and both are keen to preserve their “concert of interest” in Central Asia; ii) the USA continues to support Taiwan and buttress pro-Western regimes or regime change in the former republics of the USSR outside Russia, thus risking alienation of both China and Russia, and nourishing an embryonic Eurasian military-cum-security bloc; and iii) the quest for energy from Central Asia and Siberia, particularly oil and gas resources, becomes a key preoccupation of foreign economic and security policies for the PRC leadership. These conditions are likely to be maintained or fulfilled in the near and intermediate term, as the political orientation and foreign policy priorities of the major players in Central Asia and countries in the region are expected to change little in the foreseeable future.

6

China’s participation in ASEAN + 3 and ASEAN + China

The rapid sell-off of local currencies and resultant financial and economic crisis that hit East Asia during 1997–1999, and the mixed and uneven recovery among affected countries, dealt a severe blow to the momentum of trans-regional cooperation ventures such as Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). From then on, the leading attempt to forge a regional order in East Asia has been centered on the ASEAN + China, Japan and Korea (ASEAN + 3), an arrangement that traces its roots back to the East Asia Economic Group vision espoused by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed in 1990, which has expanded into the East Asian Summit since 2005. Although the Chinese currency was relatively well-insulated against attacks from speculators because of currency controls, the Asian financial crisis contributed within the Chinese leadership to widespread sympathy for the plight of its Asian neighbors and an increasing sense of identification with them in a common pan-Asian destiny. At the same time, resentment against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for stipulating structural reforms as conditions for loans led Asian countries, including China, to develop a sense of shared victim-hood against the “West.” The creation of new economic and financial cooperative arrangements, such as the ASEAN + 3, helped to induce China to root its identity in the region, which, in turn, provides an important social context for China and its neighboring countries to increase solidarity among East Asian states.1

Institutionalizing ASEAN + 3 (10 + 3): linking the economies of Northeast and Southeast Asia The 10 + 3 forum was instituted when the leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea met as a group with their counterparts from the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Kuala Lumpur in December 1997 in the midst of the Asian financial crisis. At the second 10 + 3 summit in December 1998 in Hanoi, China proposed holding a regular forum of deputy finance ministers of all 10 + 3 countries to discuss financial issues, consequent to which one was held in March 1999, followed by a finance ministers’ meeting among these members the following month.2 The leaders issued their first “Joint

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Statement on East Asian Cooperation” at the third 10 + 3 summit held in Manila in November 1999, and set in motion a series of meetings between the foreign, finance, and economic ministers of the grouping. As the original goal of the grouping was to stabilize East Asia’s currencies and economies after the Asian crisis, the finance ministers of all 10 + 3 states came together in the Thai city of Chiang Mai in May 2000 to work out a regional currency-swap mechanism to act as a monetary stabilization fund, by which the 13 countries would lend one another part of their hard currency reserves if any of their currencies came under speculative pressure. The financial crisis that inspired this so-called Chiang Mai Initiative led to a series of meetings that in turn developed trust among the 10+3 countries. In accordance with this initiative, China signed a series of bilateral monetary agreements with Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. China also enhanced its reputation in the region by maintaining the value of its currency to forestall competitive devaluations by crisis-hit countries and contributing US$1 billion to the IMF rescue package for Thailand. At the sixth ASEAN + 3 summit held in Phnom Penh on November 4, 2002, China announced that it would waive all or most of the debt owed to it by Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Burma. By acting responsibly in not devaluing its currency, as widely feared, which would have led to competitive devaluations by crisis-hit countries and consequent increases in the prices of imports, and by offering aid packages and low-interest loans worth a few billion US dollars to several Southeast Asian states, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government did much to replace the image of China as aloof or uncaring with one of China as a helpful neighbor and responsible power. The welcomed response boosted the self-confidence of China’s leaders in their roles as important regional actors. China’s interest in institutionalizing regional multilateral processes in East Asia coincides with, and is propelled by, the substantial intensification of intraregional trade and investment within the last two decades and the growth of regional production networks and supply chains centered first on Japan, and increasingly on China.3 China’s economic open-door policy has since the late 1970s given special incentives to ethnic Chinese clan-based or family businesses from Southeast Asia and elsewhere to invest in their homeland. Also, Asian governments have developed a sense of urgency, especially since the 1990s, in desiring to pursue closer relations with one another to give the region balance against the possible development of exclusive blocs elsewhere, particularly in Europe and North America.4 Kim Dae-jung as President of South Korea was particularly insistent on this point.5 Regional economic cooperation in Asia had until then been almost completely market-driven rather than guided by any multilateral institutional arrangements. The stronger than expected growth of China and the recovery and strengthening of foreign direct investment between ASEAN and the other three countries in the 10 + 3 are also significant forces in consolidating the grouping.6 Furthermore, there are arguments increasingly made by East Asians that the region needs to develop a regional identity to balance the influence

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of the USA in Asia, increase its weight in the world, and have a stronger voice in global financial and trade institutions that are still largely dominated by the West. These material and ideational vectors for Asian regionalism have, if anything, become more salient as time passes. China has supported the formation of the East Asian Vision Group of academics in 1999, which came up with the blueprint report “Towards an East Asian Community” in 2002, calling not only for trade and financial liberalization, but also for strengthened cooperation in the political, security, social, and cultural fields to create a regional community. At the ASEAN + 3 summit in 2002, China suggested that the process be expanded to include regional political and security issues such as combating terrorism and other trans-national crime.7 Since then, ASEAN + 3 has evolved into something much more complex, including the promotion of confidence-building measures and traditional and non-traditional security in the region. At the ASEAN + 3 Summit in October 2003, PRC Premier Wen Jiabao formally enunciated the “Good Neighbor Policy” to realize a “friendly neighborhood, secure neighborhood, and prosperous neighborhood,” for China and its Asian neighbors,8 which it had already been practicing since the 1980s, albeit then on a largely bilateral basis. Articulating the policy at the highest level gathering of Chinese and Southeast Asian government leaders provided a strong signal to all participants indicating that China is fully amendable to the “ASEAN Way” of incremental consensus-building and group decision-making. China has also taken the initiative to push for the creation of a Network of East Asia ThinkTanks (NEAT).9 In 2006, South Korea proposed creating an integrated ASEAN + 3 “e-government center” in Seoul to act as a bridge to smoothen exchanges in such fields as human resources, technical support, education, and training, a move that is supported by China.10 In the process of establishing a distinct regional identity as the East Asian Community, ASEAN + 3 promises much and is displaying signs of institutional consolidation. Interregional trade among the ASEAN + 3 countries as subsequently constituted was less than 35 percent of the total foreign trade value of these countries in 1980, but by 2004, it had exceeded 54 percent.11 Up to April 2005, 16 bilateral currency swap arrangements have been signed under the Chiang Mai Initiative, amounting to US$37.5 billion, although this represents only a mere fraction of the combined foreign exchange reserves of around US$2.5 trillion then at the disposal of East Asian states.12 In May 2008, a currency-swap arrangement of US$80 billion involving all ASEAN + 3 states was agreed upon by their finance ministers to unite the existing separate bilateral currency swaps into a multilateral one.13 Expanded to US$120 billion in February 2009, this Chiang Mai Initiative Multilaterization (CMIM) would involve contributions from China, Japan, South Korea, and ASEAN countries in proportions of 32, 32, 16, and 20 percent, respectively, or US$38.4 billion (including US$4.2 billion from Hong Kong), US$38.4 billion, US$19.2 billion, and US$24 billion.14 To recycle savings within the region, in 2003, an Asian Bond Market/Asian Bond Fund that would issue bonds denominated in local currencies was created,15 involving Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia,

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New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. China’s financial policy planning community sees China’s active interest and participation in, and promotion of the Asian Bond Fund, under the aegis of Hong Kong’s monetary authority, as having reinforced China’s image of a responsible great power, and thereby facilitated its integration and comprehensive cooperation with Asia and the world.16 Since 2003, an ASEAN + 3 unit was established in the ASEAN Secretariat to research specific issues raised by the principals that gradually led to the drafting of detailed agendas for the group’s meetings.17 There are currently 48 dialogue mechanisms under the 10 + 3 process, coordinating 16 areas of cooperation, which include economics, finance, foreign affairs, politics, security, labor, health, tourism, environment, agriculture, forestry, social welfare, energy, trans-national crime, information and communications technology (ICT), and youth affairs. At the ninth meeting of 10 + 3 foreign ministers in July 2008, it was agreed that China, Japan and Korea would each contribute US$900,000, and ASEAN would contribute US$300,000 to launch the ASEAN + 3 Cooperation Fund for the implantation of joint projects.18 However, despite talks of setting up a free trade area and an Asian Monetary Fund type of financial arrangement,19 the grouping has not institutionalized itself to any extent. Although there are fairly regular meetings of 10 + 3 leaders, ministers, and senior officials, and documents to set and record the agenda of these meetings, there is as yet no secretariat, permanent staff, binding agreement, or written set of rules to structure the grouping.

Obstacles to institutionalizing ASEAN + 3 The semi-structured character of the 10 + 3 principally reflects several factors that stand in the way of its institutionalization. First, the leaders and ministers of the 10 ASEAN countries and China, Japan, and South Korea have consistently exhibited a preference for maintaining the incremental, consensus-building approach of the forum and non-binding nature of understandings reached – the fabled “ASEAN Way” – to avoid or minimize open conflict. Second, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed notwithstanding, leaders of ASEAN were not in favor of creating a separate 10 + 3 secretariat,20 for fear of diluting ASEAN’s already limited influence within the enlarged grouping. However, ASEAN leaders did consent to the establishment of a 10 + 3 Unit within the existing ASEAN Secretariat in December 2003 to coordinate and monitor 10 + 3 cooperation. Third, China’s proposal at the sixth 10 + 3 summit in November 2002, that the 10 + 3 process be expanded from trade, investment, and financial cooperation to include regional political and security issues such as combating terrorism, piracy, money laundering, arms smuggling and other transnational crime, and suggestion of a separate free trade area for China, Japan, and South Korea,21 may actually have diffused the economic focus of the 10 + 3 process.22 These expanded aims were reiterated in the “ASEAN Plus Three Cooperation Work Plan 2007–2017” adopted at the eleventh 10 + 3 summit in Singapore in November 2007.23 Fourth, even though the 10 + 3 countries have

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developed a non-traditional security agenda for cooperation and consultation, to address “piracy, drug-trafficking, illegal migration, smuggling of small arms, money laundering, cyber crime, international terrorism and other issues affecting human security,”24 they have been very cautious about expanding cooperation or even discussion beyond a non-traditional security agenda, for fear of provoking US concerns that it will turn into an institution that provides China with a vehicle to dominate East Asian politics and undermine US presence and interest in the region. Finally, head-to-head competition for economic influence in Southeast Asia between China and Japan, and Japan’s refusal so far to acquiesce China’s desire for leadership of the 10 + 3, may have been the biggest obstacles to institutionalizing the 10 + 3. This point is elaborated below. There is no gainsaying the importance of Japanese production networks in Southeast Asia, developed particularly through Japanese foreign direct investments (FDI), in accounting for the region’s economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s. Japan became a regular dialogue partner of ASEAN as early as 1977, 19 years before China. Revaluation of the Japanese Yen in the mid-1980s following the Plaza Accord made Southeast Asia an attractive manufacturing and export platform for Japanese investors. Even in the midst of Japan’s prolonged economic recession throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, when Japan’s “lost decade” coincided with the rise of China’s economic influence in Southeast Asia, the Southeast Asian region as a whole counted for around 30 percent of Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) and received the largest amount of FDI from Japan by region. At the onset of the Asian crisis, Japan committed US$4 billion worth of special drawing rights of its foreign currency reserves to Thailand, one of the earliest and hardest-hit countries affected by the crisis. Japan launched an initiative to set up an Asian Monetary Fund consisting of US$100 billion in standby financing to affected countries, but quickly retracted the idea once the USA objected to it as an avenue to circumvent IMF conditionality. Japan desires to act as the leader of the region, but because the bilateral relationship with the USA has remained the central axis of Japanese foreign policy, it tries to do nothing that might earn it the disapproval of the US government and harm their close economic ties and security alliance. Undeterred, and given the severity of the developing crisis, Japan in 1998 repackaged the proposal as the New Miyazawa Initiative, named after thenMinister for Finance Kiichi Miyazawa, this time with US acquiescence. Under the New Miyazawa Initiative, US$30 billion would be available in loans at belowmarket interest rates and with few conditions, and a 2 trillion Yen fund would be set up to back yen-dominated bonds issued by Asia-Pacific economies.25 One of the main reasons for Japan’s participation in 10 + 3 is to balance or dilute the influence of China in Southeast Asia, which Japan has for decades considered to be its investment destination, export platform, and resource area. By aggressively pursuing a strong China-ASEAN axis within the 10 + 3 since 2001 to sign a free trade agreement (FTA) between China and ASEAN, China has triggered strong competition between itself and Japan for influence in Southeast Asia. Observers widely see the Japanese government’s decision in

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2002 to set up a study group to look into the conclusion of a “closer economic partnership” with ASEAN as a belated attempt to compete and catch up with China’s proposal for the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area. Japan has seen itself as losing economic ground to China in Southeast Asia for the decade since 1995. However, because of its important trade and investment links with the USA and Western countries, Japan wants to prevent the integration of an exclusionary Asian economic bloc, and desires an East Asian “community” of nations that would include 10 + 3 countries as well as Australia, New Zealand, and India. Although the resultant East Asian Summit (EAS), which held its first annual meeting in December 2005, seemed to have focused its concern on environmental protection and energy conservation, the EAS may as yet chart a series of gradual steps toward greater economic, monetary, and functional cooperation within an “East Asian Community,” with ASEAN + 3 as its core. However, if it were to adopt “open regionalism” rules and excessive membership expansion as seen under APEC more than a decade ago, it could risk dilution and irrelevance. Only time will tell how the EAS develops into, but because many Chinese see it as a Japanese initiative, they have little desire to expend much attention or energy towards nurturing the EAS. Growing dependency on the import of oil and natural gas will likely aggravate China’s energy security worries, and Japan is widely percieved to be in competition with China for the Russian Far East oil pipeline to be constructed from Angarsk in western Siberia a to the Pacific Ocean, although the Russian authorities have promised the Chinese a spur pipeline connection to Heilongjiang province. This is despite the fact that since June 2004, energy ministers of the ASEAN + 3 have met annually to consider various forms of energy cooperation among the countries, such as “group procuring” crude oil from the Middle East, or establishing a common oil reserve. Furthermore, recent relations between China and Japan had become emotionally charged, inflamed by former Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro’s repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine honoring its war dead, Japan’s campaign for permanent membership in the United Nations Security Council, rival claims to petroleum deposits under the East China Sea, and demonstrations against Japanese establishments in Chinese cities that turned violent. Although official relations between China and Japan have recovered somewhat since the resignation of Koizumi in September 2006, with no sitting prime minister of Japan having visited the Shrine since, and talks on joint hydrocarbon exploration of the East China Sea-bed being conducted, as long as the governments of Asia’s two main powers remain prone to disagreements, and people-to-people ties are fraught with emotions and nationalistic sentiments, it would be difficult to build enough trust and comfort necessary to advance regional integration within East Asia. Although the state of Sino-Japanese relations is often regarded as a barometer of cooperation within ASEAN + 3, leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea have been meeting separately and without fanfare on the margins of the ASEAN + 3 summit meetings since 1999. Up until April 2009, there have been nine meetings.

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China cancelled the trilateral summit in 2005 due to Koizumi’s visit to the Yasakuni Shrine, but, since March 2007, the three countries have started negotiations on a trilateral investment agreement. In April 2009, the ASEAN + 3 Summit, the EAS and other ASEAN-related summit meetings, already deferred from December 2008, were cancelled in spite of the arrival of all the leaders of participating countries at the conference venue in Pattaya, Thailand. The cancellation was forced after anti-government protesters stormed the meeting location. Nevertheless, the leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea managed to meet at a different location in Thailand. The first independent China-South Korea-Japan Trilateral Summit Meeting held apart from ASEAN-related meetings took place in December 2008 in Japan’s Fukuoka. This was an opportunity for Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, and then-Japanese Prime Minister Aso Taro to confer on the existing global financial and economic crisis.26 The second summit between the Chinese Prime Minister, the South Korean President, and the newly elected Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio took place in Beijing in October 2009, at which they discussed both the crisis and ways to persuade North Korea not to develop nuclear weapons.27

Institutionalizing ASEAN + China (10 + 1): linking China and Southeast Asia Since the Asian financial crisis of the late twentieth century, China has increasingly emphasized mutual material benefits in its relations with Southeast Asian countries, which, to a large extent, admire China as an ancient and advanced Asian culture, as well as a model of economic development amidst political stability. To increase across-the-board and concrete cooperation with ASEAN without the presence of a potentially obstructionist foreign power, and to some extent, marginalize Taiwan’s diplomatic and economic involvement with Southeast Asian states, further intensify intra-Asian trade and investment, and re-center the growth of regional production networks and supply chains from Japan to China, the PRC has taken a leading role toward institutionalizing a separate China-ASEAN 10 + 1 axis within the rubric of 10 + 3. Within 10 + 1, China is taking the principal role in sub-regional integration with Southeast Asia, its southeastern belly; with strengthening economic ties laying what it hopes would be a solid foundation for political, security, and other functional relationships between China and ASEAN. This is also in line with ASEAN’s long-standing commitment to pursuing a policy of engagement with China for the sake of preserving peace and stability in the Southeast Asian region. ASEAN may actually have found itself more effective in bargaining with China alone than having to deal with two or three regional powers in the same instance. China is pushing institutionalization of the 10 + 1 along the “ASEAN Way,” at a pace with which both China and ASEAN countries are comfortable. The 10 + 1 process has as its genesis the first China-ASEAN Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM) at Hangzhou, China, in April 1995. Despite Beijing’s initial

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reluctance to discuss disputes about sovereignty and jurisdiction in the South China Sea, following occupation of the disputed Mischief Reef by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Chinese senior officials agreed to informal discussions on the Spratlys at the first China-ASEAN SOM, and accepted that this issue would be broached and tabled at subsequent China-ASEAN meetings.28 At the second China-ASEAN SOM in June 1996, Beijing avowed the norms of restraint, non-use of force, and peaceful settlement of conflict with ASEAN.29 A regular China-ASEAN dialogue was instituted in July 1996, when the erstwhile PRC Vice Premier and Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, attended the Postministerial Conference of the ASEAN Annual Ministerial Meeting as a Dialogue Partner of ASEAN for the first time. There are five parallel mechanisms that form the overall structure of this ASEAN-China dialogue. They are the ASEAN-China Joint Committee on Economic and Trade Cooperation, ASEAN-China Joint Science and Technology Committee, and ASEAN-China Senior Officials Political Consultation, all started in 1995, and the ASEAN-China Joint Cooperation Committee (ACJCC) and ASEAN Committee in Beijing, both inaugurated in February 1997. The ACJCC acts as the coordinator of all ASEAN-China dialogue mechanisms at the working group level,30 and manages the ASEAN-China Cooperative Fund, which finances studies for joint projects. China’s contribution to the fund at the 1997, 2000, and 2004 summits with ASEAN was US$5 million on each of the occasions.31 December 1997 witnessed China’s attendance at the first informal China-ASEAN summit. At their joint summit in 2002, China and ASEAN signed four key agreements: the Declaration on Conduct (DOC) in the South China Sea; the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Establishment of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area; the Memorandum of Understanding on Agricultural Cooperation; and the Joint Declaration on Cooperation in the Field of Non-traditional Security Issues. With the DOC, Beijing reaffirmed the norms of restraint, freedom of navigation and overflight, non-use of force, and peaceful settlement of conflict in handling its disputes with other claimants over the South China Sea islands. At the China-ASEAN SOM on implementing the DOC in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in December 2004, the ASEAN-China Joint Working Group on the Implementation of the DOC (ACJWG) was established, which held its first meeting in August 2005 in Manila, the Philippines.32 The Sino-ASEAN Economic Agreement in 2002 aims to start an ASEANChina Free Trade Area (ACFTA) by 2010, with the poorer Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar joining by 2015.33 In November 2004, China and ASEAN signed the Agreement on Trade in Goods, which included a schedule of tariff reductions and eventual elimination for most goods traded between the two sides beginning in 2005. In January 2007, the Agreement on Trade in Services of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area was signed to liberalize rules on trade in services. At the time when the China-ASEAN Investment Agreement was signed in August 2009, China’s Prime Minister Wen announced a US$10 billion China-ASEAN Fund on Investment Cooperation,

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promised to provide US$15 billion credit for cooperation projects, placed another US$5 billion in the ASEAN-China Cooperation Fund, endowed 2,200 scholarships for students from developing countries in East Asia for the following five years, and set aside 300,000 tons of rice as a regional emergency food reserve.34 Regarding the Agricultural Memorandum, a particularly enticing aspect for Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar is its “early harvest” provision, by which China undertook to reduce or remove tariff on about 600 items of agricultural, fruit, and meat imports of these countries starting from July 2005 without reciprocity for five years hence. This “early harvest” for ASEAN exports boosted Sino-ASEAN trade to US$202.7 billion in 2007, exceeding the figure for US-ASEAN trade, which stood at US$171.32 billion.35 As to the Joint Declaration on Non-traditional Security, it aims to promote cooperation in combating crossborder drug smuggling, human trafficking, money-laundering, spread of epidemics, and terrorist activities. At the seventh China-ASEAN summit in Bali, Indonesia, on October 8, 2003, China became the first non-ASEAN state to formally accede to ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), which commits China to respecting the principles of non-aggression and non-interference in the domestic affairs of signatory states. PRC and ASEAN state leaders also made a joint declaration to effect a “China–ASEAN Strategic Partnership for Peace and Prosperity” at that meeting. These norms dovetail with the “ASEAN Way” of interstate conduct, which could be said to have been derived from the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence formulated by China, and provide a means, albeit symbolic, for China to reassure the ASEAN countries of its peaceful intent. Under the 10 + 1 mechanism, China has identified five important areas for cooperation, in agriculture, information technology, human resource development, mutual economic investments, and development of the so-called Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS). The GMS program is operated under the tutelage of the Asian Development Bank. Since 2002, a triannual summit has been held among heads of government and business leaders from China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Myanmar, countries connected by the Mekong River, on the development of the custom services, highways, and railways, particularly the completion of the Singapore-Kunming Rail Link, and the PRC government has also backed soft loans to Chinese business interests in the Mekong River Basin.36 Up till 2008, Beijing had spent more than US$4 billion to build highways connecting Kunming in China’s southern Yunnan province to different parts of the GMS.37 Trade between China and the other GMS countries already totaled US$25.82 billion by 2004,38 including barter. Also, through regionalist efforts, the joint management of Southeast Asian river systems can transform a source of potential conflict over fishing and water resources into an item of cooperation to bring relations between China and the ASEAN countries closer. China has financed many infrastructure and energy-related projects in Indochina and mainland Southeast Asia that rely on Chinese materials, technical expertise or labor, in exchange for raw materials and oil. In 2006, PRC Prime Minister Wen Jiabao pledged US$600 million in aid and loans to Cambodia, and

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for the 2007–2009 period, through the Consultative Group for Cambodia, a consortium of international finance organizations and donor countries under the auspices of the World Bank, pledged a further US$236 million in unspecified aid.39 Chinese companies are funding the construction of hydroelectric power plants in Cambodia, including the US$280 million 193 megawatts Kamchay hydropower plant by the Sino-Hydropower Corp.40 Since the late 1990s, China has provided Laos with grants, low-interest loans, technical assistance, foreign investment and aid for transportation infrastructure and hydropower projects worth US$178 million; youth volunteers engaging in medical, educational, and agricultural training programs; and Chinese companies setting up rubber plantations since 2004.41 PRC President Hu Jintao offered US$45 million in economic and technical cooperation and debt forgiveness on his visit to Laos’ capital Vientiane in 2006.42 As for Vietnam, the PRC reportedly offered nearly US$200 million in grants and loans in 2005,43 for railway projects, thermal-power generation and ship-building. China and Vietnam are also engaging in joint exploration for oil and gas in the Tonkin/Beibu Gulf. China has been the largest source of military assistance in weaponry to Myanmar’s military junta since 1988, has pledged almost US$5 billion in loans for industrial plants and equipment, investment in mineral exploration, hydropower and hydrocarbon production, and agricultural projects, and helped the Myanmarese to build roads, railroads, airfields, and ports.44 Chinese oil and gas companies such as the China National Petrochemical Corporation, PetroChina and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation are constructing pipelines from hydrocarbon platforms in Myanmar, in joint ventures with local firms, to Yunnan province, such as the US$2 billion gas pipeline from Sittwe on the coast of the Andaman Sea.45 During the visit of Thailand’s former premier Samak Sundaravej to Beijing in July 2008, China pledged its companies to provide loans of US$400 million to build electric trains for metropolitan Bangkok and finance the expansion of Thailand’s public utilities.46 Aptly summarized by the New York Times, “China is making big loans for big projects to [neighboring] countries that used to be the sole preserve of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United States, and Japan.”47 Although a number of ASEAN states actually compete directly with China in terms of agricultural products and low-wage labor-intensive export manufacturing industries in third country markets, China is a vast marketplace for ASEAN produce, and ASEAN leaders and businesspersons generally perceive China and the proposed ACFTA to be much more of an opportunity than a threat. A FTA with China would not only yield freer access to the Chinese market for ASEAN, but also greater attractiveness for the group as a destination for Japanese, South Korean and other external investments using Southeast Asia as a production platform. At the eighth China-ASEAN summit in the Laotian capital of Vientiane in November 2004, a specific timeframe was introduced to reduce or eliminate tariff or non-tariff barriers for each country under the ACFTA agreement, and an arbitral tribunal was set up to resolve disputes under the ASEAN-China Protocol on Enhanced Dispute Settlement Mechanism.48 According to Article 7 of the

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Protocol, which applies to all trade and economic-related disputes, “if the parties are unable to agree on the chair of the arbitral tribunal in time, they have to request the WTO [World Trade Organization] to appoint the chair.” This is one more demonstration of how far China has moved from fortifying its own sovereignty over the conduct of foreign policy to expressing a willingness to subscribe to real institutional constraints on its actions in multilateral regional forums. Also, with the establishment of the ACFTA, ASEAN exports to China will increase by an estimated US$13 billion and China’s exports to ASEAN will increase by about US$10.6 billion, with both China and ASEAN seeing a reduction of their trade with the US and Japan.49 Since November 2004, as part of 10 + 1 activities, China has hosted an annual ASEAN-China Exposition in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the PRC’s provincial unit adjacent to Vietnam. From 1997 to 2007, China’s exports to ASEAN states grew from US$12.7 billion to US$94.1 billion and imports from them rose from US$12.4 billion to US$108.4 billion, at rates of 640 and 774 percent, respectively.50 By 2007, over a quarter of China’s imports are from Southeast Asia,51 making intra-East Asian trade an important element of global trade patterns. China is also a growing source of tourism to Southeast Asian countries. It has been said that, “ASEAN countries have realized that China has already become the fastest engine of Asia’s economies, and whoever gets on this locomotive will have a bright future.”52 China carried a trade deficit with ASEAN as a whole from 2000 to 2006; which, in that last year, had totaled US$18.2 billion.53 Unlike in the immediate aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, when China received around 2.5 times the amount of FDI that flowed to Southeast Asia, or US$234 billion versus US$98 billion between 1999 and 2003,54 with the improvement in the ASEAN economies, diversion of thirdcountry FDI from Southeast Asia to China is no longer much of an issue. By the start of 2006, Chinese investments in ASEAN reached US$35 billion,55 and by 2008, ASEAN investments in China totaled US$50 billion.56 The political initiative to promote regional stability and coordinate economic policies in East Asia seems to come mostly from China. Although aware of, and increasingly concerned about, Beijing’s aggressive pursuit of FTAs with regional trading partners, after 15 years in the economic doldrums until about 2005, Japan is facing a shrinking population and labor force, reluctant to allow FDI into Japan, and focused on its investments in North America and Europe rather than the dynamic economies of Asia. According to a recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute, from 1990 to 2006, Japan’s share of global financial assets in Asia fell from 23 to 12 percent, whereas China’s share increased from 1 to 5 percent.57 America’s main engagement in mainland Southeast Asia has been to impose sanctions and launch acerbic criticisms against the military regime of Myanmar, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even calling on ASEAN to consider expelling Myanmar from the group’s membership, if it would not release imprisoned opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.58 Meanwhile, US foreign policy objectives in ASEAN have mostly focused on bolstering relations with, and giving military aid to, maritime Southeast Asian states with their large

Table 6.1 Institutionalization of ASEAN + 3 vs. ASEAN + China: Meetings and Organs ASEAN + 3 Summit level First round: 1997/12/15 President Jiang Zemin Second round: 1998/12/16 Vice President Hu Jintao Third round: 1999/11/28 Premier Zhu Rongji 10 + 3 regularized with “Joint Statement on East Asia Cooperation” Chiang Mai Initiative instituted Fourth round: 2000/11/24 Premier Zhu Rongji Fifth round: 2001/11/5 Premier Zhu Rongji Sixth round: 2002/11/4 Premier Zhu Rongji Seventh round: 2003/10/7 Premier Wen Jiabao10 + 3 headquarters established at ASEAN Secretariat – no constitution Eighth round: 2004/11/29 Premier Wen Jiabao Ninth round: 2005/12/12 Premier Wen Jiabao First East Asian Summit on 2005/12/14 Tenth round: 2007/1/14 Premier Wen Jiabao Second East Asian Summit on 2007/1/15 Eleventh round: 2007/11/20 Premier Wen Jiabao Third East Asian Summit on 2007/11/21 A Special ASEAN + 3 Summit was held in Beijing on October 24, 2008 on the sidelines of the seventh ASEAN-Europe Meeting (ASEM) (as an informal working breakfast to discuss how ASEAN + 3 countries can deal with the global financial crisis) Twelfth round: 2009/10/24 Premier Wen Jiabao Fourth East Asian Summit on 2009/10/25 10+3 President meeting (1x) Vice President meeting (1x) Premier meeting (9x)

ASEAN + China First round:1997/12/16 President Jiang Zemin Second round: 1998/12/16 Vice President Hu Jintao Third round: 1999/11/28 Premier Zhu Rongji Fourth round: 2000/11/25 Premier Zhu Rongji GMS initiated by PRC: First summit 2002; second summit 2005 Fifth round: 2001/11/6 Premier Zhu Rongji CAFTA proposed by Zhu Sixth round: 2002/11/4 Premier Zhu Rongji CAFTA 10-year timeframe instituted Seventh round: 2003/10/8 Premier Wen Jiabao PRC signed ASEAN TAC Eighth round: 2004/11/29 Premier Wen Jiabao Ninth round: 2005/12/12 Premier Wen Jiabao Tenth round: 2007/1/14 Premier Wen Jiabao Eleventh round: 2007/11/20 Premier Wen Jiabao

ASEAN-China Leaders Meeting on SARS held in Bangkok on 29 April 2003. Premier Wen Jiabao 10+1 President meeting (1x) Vice President meeting (1x) Premier meeting (9x+1 on SARS) (Continued on next page)

Table 6.1 (Continued) ASEAN + 3 Ministerial level 10 + 3 1) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting till July, 2009 (10x) 2) Economic Ministers’ Meeting (AEM + 3) till August 2009 (12x) 3) Finance Ministers’ Meeting till May 2009 (12x) 4) Agriculture and Forestry Ministers’ Meeting(AMAF + 3) till October 2008 (8x) 5) Labour Ministers’ Meeting (ALMM + 3) On May 9, 2003 in Mataram (on SARS) Last meeting: May 8, 2008, Bangkok, Thailand 6) Tourism Ministers’ Meeting till January 2009 (8x) 7) Environmental Ministers’ Meeting till October 2008 (7x) 8) Health Ministers’ Meeting till October 2008 (3x) Special meeting on H1N1 on May 8, 2009, Bangkok, Thailand 9) Information and Communications Technology Ministers’ Meeting till September 2005 (2x) 10) Social Welfare Ministers’ Meeting till December 2007 (2x) 12) Trans-national Crime Ministers’ Meeting(AMMTC + 3) till November 2007 (3x) 13) Energy Ministers’ Meeting till August 2009 (6x)

ASEAN + China 10 + 1 ASEAN-China Foreign Ministers’ Meeting till July 2009 (11x) ASEAN-China Economic Ministers’ Meeting In November 2001 in Hanoi (on CAFTA) till August 2009 (8x)

ASEAN + China Health Ministers’ Meeting till October 2008 (2x) ASEAN-China Telecommunication Ministers’ Meeting till August 2008 (3x)

ASEAN-China Transport Ministers’ Meeting till November 2008 (6x) ASEAN-China Ministers’ for Youth Affairs Meeting in April 2007 (2x) China–ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Quality, Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine till October 2007 (1x) Senior Officials’ Meeting 10 + 3 ASEAN + 3 Senior Officials’ Meeting Year of Establishment 2000 Twice a year Last Meeting: July 22, 2008, Singapore

10 + 1 ASEAN-China Senior Officials’ Meeting till March 2008 (14x)

China’s participation in ASEAN + 3 and ASEAN + China

85

Table 6.1 (Continued) ASEAN + 3 Senior Officials’ Meeting on Energy (Energy Policy Working Group) till January 2008 (7x) ASEAN + 3 Senior Health Officials’ Meeting on SARS June 8-9, 2003 till October 2008 (3x) Special Senior Labor Officials’ Meeting on SARS in early July 2003 Last meeting: May 7, 2008, Bangkok, Thailand Senior Officials’ Meeting on Trans-national Crime till November 7, 2007 (5x) Senior Officials’ Meeting on “Creative Management for Government” May 26, 2005 Group of Experts (GOE) and Technical Working Group on Economic and Financial Monitoring (ETWG) formed at 9th ASEANT 3 Finance Minister’s Meeting, May 4, 2006

ASEAN + China

ASEAN-China Expert Group on Economic Cooperation established in April 2001 to study proposed ACFTA Third Senior Officials’ Meeting on May 14, 2002 discussed proposed CAFTA objectives, principles, context and timeframe Senior Officials’ Meeting in December 2004 followed-up on Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea Senior Officials’ Consultation Meeting on Youth in May 2004

Muslim populations in the hunt for Islamic terrorists.59 The USA has also preferred to deal with ASEAN countries individually rather than on a collective basis as a grouping, and this preference did not seem to have been altered to any extent. The USA seems to be contented with the seven functional mechanisms it has developed with ASEAN over 30 years as a dialogue partner; even though China already holds 48 such mechanisms with ASEAN over a much shorter period of time (Japan has 33 such mechanisms with ASEAN over 25 years).60 As to Taiwan, notwithstanding its robust trading and investment links with Southeast Asian countries, it could not dissuade ASEAN, after years of dithering, from ultimately endorsing the PRC’s One-China policy at the ASEAN + China summit of 2004.61 Still, aside from the trade liberalization schedules of ACFTA, the 10 + 1 has yet to establish specific rules or the mechanisms to make binding the common objectives of member states, although they have agreed on many of these shared goals, and Myanmar is never an issue where China-ASEAN relations are concerned. Still, China’s sheer size, its authoritarian political structure, and its

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history of hegemonic attempts over parts of Southeast Asia, together with the unresolved claims to the South China Sea islands, make it hard to dispel the unease that Southeast Asian countries have toward China. On the last point, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) held an exercise around the Paracel Islands in November 2007 that led to a formal protest from Vietnam, which claims both the Spratlys and Paracels. When the House of Representatives of the Philippine Congress passed a bill in February 2009 describing the disputed Spratly islands as lying within the country’s territorial waters, it prompted China to protest within 24 hours, forcing the lawmakers to reword the bill.62 China’s non-interference foreign policy principle and activism in a multilateral setting is a reassuring signal to its neighbors, but not a guarantee of future non-aggressive actions. Nonetheless, in the 10 + 1 and 10 + 3 meetings, the countries involved have agreed to promote the establishment of an “East Asian Community;” now is the time for the Chinese authorities to set this up as a specific goal in its regionalism efforts.63 To balance against the development and consolidation of economic blocs in Europe and North America, Asian governments have been given a strong incentive, especially since the 1990s, to pursue closer relations within the region.64 There is also an argument that, with the liberalization process in the World Trade Organization bogged down, easing trade and investment flows within an area like that covered by the East Asian Summit, which is larger than ASEAN + 3 but more manageable than APEC, would benefit more people.65 At the ninth ASEAN + 3 meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in August 2006, Japan suggested the concept of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership of East Asia (CEPEA) embracing the countries represented in the East Asian Summit.66 There are also arguments increasingly made by East Asians that the region needs to develop a regional identity, to increase its weight in the world and, with the development of an Asian regional economic and financial cooperation, have a stronger voice in global financial and trade institutions that are still largely dominated by the West. Indeed, the rise of new economic and financial cooperative mechanisms would be an important step forward for an Asian regional integration project, but this could not have been done without China’s enthusiastic embrace of, and desire to set the pace for, the institutionalization of regional multilateralism. Nonetheless, even if China becomes the primus inter pares of the East Asian-Western Pacific region, regional order is hitched to a China-Japan relationship that is, if not friendly, at least workable, for which China would have to convince everyone that its rise is peaceful, and Japan would have to be more independent of the USA in its strategic calculations.

7

China’s participation in the Four-Party Talks and Six-Party Talks

The Six-Party Talks (6PT), and before that, the Four-Party Talks (4PT), concern international efforts to pressure and entice North Korea into giving up its nuclear weapons-making capabilities. China’s approaches to both series of talks demonstrate an attempt to balance its stated foreign policy principles of respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, non-aggression, and non-interference in states’ internal affairs, which explains its reluctance to coerce North Korea through conditionality on aid and trade, and a more recent foreign policy priority of establishing an image of China as a responsible and pragmatic power willing to cooperate with all countries regardless of their political systems, for the interest of preserving and advancing peace and stability, foremost in its neighborhood region.1 This balance means that, although China will not endorse or implement policies that it believes could create instability or threaten its continued influence on the Korean peninsula, it will also not tolerate North Korea’s erratic and dangerous behavior that may pose a real risk of conflict.2 Through involvement in the 6PT, China hopes to demonstrate its commitment to multilateralism and exert influence in its Northeast Asian neighborhood.

The 4PT and reasons for its failure State survival and political ideology during and after the Korean War (1950–1953) dictated the alignment of North Korea with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Soviet Union, and South Korea with the USA. However, when the Soviet Union and China normalized relations with South Korea in 1990 and 1992, respectively, it was perceived by the Pyongyang leadership that henceforth neither the Soviet Union/Russia nor China could be relied upon as a trustworthy patron or protector for North Korea. North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, which sparked off the first nuclear crisis between that country and the USA in 1993–1994, came when relations between Pyongyang and Beijing cooled off drastically, at the precise time that bilateral economic cooperation in the form of trade, investment, tourism, and education exchanges took off exponentially between China and South Korea. The 4PT and the subsequent 6PT flowed out of the failure to fulfill the terms of the Agreed Framework reached in October 1994 between the Democratic

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People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea, and the USA. Under that deal, North Korea would place a halt on its nuclear weapons-making capabilities, in exchange for fuel oil deliveries from the USA costing between US$60 million and US$65 million and assistance to build two light-water reactors (LWRs) from South Korea worth around US$4.6 billion under the aegis of a consortium led by the USA that goes by the name of the Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO).3 However, the Republicans who took control of the US Congress in late 1994, when the Agreed Framework was negotiated, were never keen on implementing this undertaking with North Korean “Stalinists,”4 and the North Korean government became highly dissatisfied with the slow delivery of fuel and assistance to build the LWRs. The 4PT between the USA, North Korea, China, and South Korea, the protagonists of the Korean War, on keeping the Korean peninsula nuclear-free, were suggested by US President Bill Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young Sam at their bilateral summit in South Korea’s Jeju in 1996.5 The talks ultimately came about because the Clinton administration’s second term was much more focused on making progress in approaching North Korea’s nuclear peace process. South Korea had calculated in a series of studies that pushing for a North Korean economic and regime collapse would yield a reunification bill of anywhere between US$200 billion and US$3 trillion, and Kim Jong Il was firmly in control as leader of North Korea three years after the death of his father and founding president of the country, Kim Il Sung, in 1994.6 Although China did not initiate the 4PT, as the goal was to finish the LWRs by 2003, and the reactor cores, equipment, and engineers had to make their way into North Korea through China,7 it made sense for China to be a participant. The 4PT, held in three preparatory meetings and six rounds of talks between December 1997 and August 1999 in Geneva, Switzerland, became deadlocked, largely because North Korea had wanted direct talks with the USA, which was also China’s position then, whereas the US had wanted to involve at least Japan, if not Russia as well, in the talks, especially if economic incentives or sanctions were to be considered as options to induce North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. The 4PT ultimately failed because, instead of focusing on keeping North Korea’s nuclear endeavors in check, the series became bogged down with talks of replacing the temporary armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 by a permanent peace. As a result, the presence of American military personnel in South Korea, then numbering around 37,000, became a major issue with the North Korean delegation, which wanted to refocus the talks on US troop withdrawals from South Korea and demanded the conclusion of a peace treaty between the DPRK and the USA.8 These were long-standing demands by North Korea, and the USA, as on many previous occasions, rejected them forthrightly. Pyongyang’s chief representative, Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan, was bitterly disappointed, saying that the North Koreans “just wanted assurances that such issues can be negotiated in the process of the four-party talks, but [the Americans] say they cannot negotiate these fundamental issues.”9 As for the USA, despite contributing food aid to North Korea, many Americans were

China’s participation in the 4PT and 6PT

89

disconcerted that the DPRK’s people were relying on the generosity of the international community to survive a widespread famine, while there were no attempts at reform of the agricultural sector and its government maintained one of the largest armies in the world with 1.1 million men under arms and spent almost one-quarter of its GDP on its huge military machine.10 At the end of the sixth round of talks, North Korea blocked agreement on a date for a new round, thereby spelling the end of the 4PT. Although the 4PT ended without any notable achievements, this set the precedence in instituting a collaborative attempt to find a joint solution to the problem of North Korea having a nuclear program. Structurally, after the parties met for the first time in plenary session, two regular sub-committees – one on tension reduction on the Korean peninsula and another on the establishment of a peace regime – were established, one ad hoc sub-committee was established for consultation purposes in the preparatory meetings before talks, and the rotation of the Chairs for the first and subsequent sessions was determined by a random draw to yield the order of the USA, PRC, South Korea, and North Korea.11 This way of conducting business would constitute the basis for the structuring of the future 6PT. After taking power and in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, the US George W. Bush administration categorized the DPRK as one of three “rogue states,” together with Iraq and Iran, which constituted an “axis of evil,” and listed it among the countries that the USA could target by nuclear weapons.12 The North Korean regime then became very concerned that it could be under pre-emptive military attack by the USA. As the North Korean leadership admitted to visiting US Assistant Secretary James Kelly in October 2002 that the DPRK was enriching uranium for nuclear weapons, then expelled the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors who had been monitoring North Korea’s compliance with the Accord, and in January 2003, withdrew altogether from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the USA had wanted the nuclear issue settled through multilateral diplomacy, whereas North Korea wanted to conclude a bilateral non-aggression treaty with the USA.

Institutionalizing the Six-Party Talks: the PRC’s roles China played a pivotal role in breaking the standoff. As a way of putting pressure on the North Koreans, China had voted for the IAEA resolution that referred the North Korean withdrawal from the NPT to the UN Security Council, even while Russia abstained. The Chinese leadership dispatched Qian Qichen – China’s former Foreign Minister and subsequent foreign policy czar – to Pyongyang to convince the North Korean leadership to stop its nuclear provocations.13 China provided a neutral “good office,” by brokering trilateral talks between the USA, DPRK, and China in April 2003, as a compromise to the other two parties. The USA then impressed upon an initially reluctant China the need to host an expanded series of talks comprising the six parties of the USA, China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, and Russia. The USA was convinced that China has

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this role to play because half its foreign aid goes to North Korea, and four-fifths of North Korea’s energy needs are met by fuel imports from China.14 Indeed, China-North Korean trade accounted for about 67 percent of Pyongyang’s total external trade, and China supplies 80 percent of the state’s consumer goods.15 The PRC shares the longest land border with the DPRK, was the state most directly involved on the North Korean side in the Korean War, and still maintains a mutual defense treaty with Pyongyang dating from 1961. In any case, according to China’s official publications, China came out from organizing the trilateral event as a major peacebroker for the region, by performing a constructive role and hence boosting its image as a great power.16 This made the Chinese enthusiastic about playing their mediating role in an expanded 6PT. To bring all parties of the proposed 6PT to the table, Chinese diplomats engaged in a flurry of “shuttle diplomacy” between Pyongyang, Washington, Tokyo, Seoul, and Moscow in July 2003.17 Since then, every time Pyongyang came to the negotiating table, high-level Chinese delegations to Pyongyang and other capitals of the six party participants seem to have just preceded the dialogues.18 PRC President Hu Jintao personally wrote to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and US President George W. Bush to finalize the first six-party meeting.19 As host of the 6PT, the Chinese spared no efforts to cater to the sensibilities of the negotiating parties. At the Beijing Diaoyutai State Guest House meeting venue, the six state delegations were arranged in alphabetical order around a large hexagonal table, with the DPRK diplomats sitting to the left of the US delegation and opposite the South Korean team.20 These shuttle and tabular arrangements would be the order of business for all subsequent 6PTs – in a sense, an institutionalized norm or structured procedure for the forum. China’s organizing role of the 6PT was all the more remarkable, considering that North Korea’s nuclear program was least likely to be developed for the purpose of threatening China, although strategic uncertainty involving a country on its doorstep was not something China would like to see, and the 6PT was a chance for the Chinese government to show regional leadership and demonstrate initiative in acting as a responsible nation. Although China’s direct involvement at the talks has been as convener and mediator, its officials have taken an active and serious role by drafting statements and providing detailed commentaries and insights on the talks. When the first round of 6PT ended without any result, Hu Jintao himself warned in August 2003 that China might not be able to continue its aid to Pyongyang if it refused to halt its nuclear weapons program, thus compelling Pyongyang to stay with the 6PT series.21 To set an agenda for the second round of the 6PT, Wu Bangguo, chairman of China’s NPC, visited Pyongyang and Washington in October, Dai Bingguo, a Vice Foreign Minister, met the Foreign Minister of South Korea in November, and Deputy Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Pyongyang in December, and Seoul and Tokyo in February of 2004.22 After the second round of talks, China successfully pushed the participating states to set up a permanent working group of senior officials,23 and after both second (February 25–28, 2004) and third (June 23–26, 2004) rounds of talks, China issued a written Chairman’s Statement. China also had a chance to demonstrate

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91

its influence over North Korea with regard to the 6PT. When North Korea subsequently threatened to abstain indefinitely from the 6PT, Wang Jiarui, Head of the CCP’s international liaison department, paid a visit to Kim Jong-il on February 19, 2005, and warned North Korea in private that if it abstained indefinitely from negotiating, China would not oppose a US bid to hand over the North Korean nuclear issue to the UN Security Council, or that China might abstain from voting should the UN decide to impose sanctions against North Korea.24 At the same time, to assuage North Korean concerns, senior PRC foreign ministry officials made public in May 2005 that China would not support either sanctions or covert coercion, regardless of how long Pyongyang’s absence from the talks would be.25 This public statement and Wang’s implicit threats apparently succeeded in extracting a commitment from Kim that North Korea was still committed to the 6PT process. In the fourth round, the longest and most productive yet, host Beijing presented a joint document draft for the consideration of the delegates, but despite having to revise it twice, still could not get it accepted by all the participants before that round went into recess on August 6, 2005 after 12 days of negotiation.26 After talks resumed on September 13, 2005, the PRC presented the delegates with another draft, which was debated upon and accepted after six days. In the final Joint Statement, North Korea agreed in principle to halt its nuclear weapons program, rejoin the NPT, and allow IAEA inspectors back into the country, whereas the USA gave an assurance not to attack North Korea, and the other four countries promised to provide an unspecified amount of energy aid to North Korea.27 Issues such as the peaceful use of nuclear energy by North Korea and the normalization of its relations with the USA and Japan were left for future discussions.28 North Korea was rewarded by China for ending the fourth round of the 6PT by a state visit to Pyongyang of PRC President Hu between October 28 and 30, 2005, and the signing of an “Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement” worth at least US$2 billion in trade credits and investment.29 However, when what became the first session of the fifth round of talks was held in November 2005, the chief US negotiator charged North Korea for breaking its promise to stop operating its nuclear facilities, and US authorities asked China to sanction the Banco Delta Asia in Macao for laundering US dollars for the North Korean government. The talks promptly broke up. Then, in October 2006, North Korea announced that it had detonated a nuclear device underground. This led to the passing of a UN Security Council resolution calling on member states to inspect cargoes bound for North Korean ports or border crossings for parts and material to build nuclear bombs. To apply pressure on Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table, China sanctioned a steep reduction of oil pipeline supplies to North Korea from September to November 2006.30 State Council Tang Jiaxuan was sent to Pyongyang as a special envoy to convey a very strong warning to Kim Jong-il personally not to conduct a second test and also to encourage North Korea to return to the 6PT.31 Beijing’s “frantic behind the scene negotiations” led to the second session of the fifth round of talks at the end of 2006,32 which ended in failure. However, under an accord achieved at the end of

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China’s participation in the 4PT and 6PT

the third session of that round on February 13, 2007, after China again cut off oil supplies for that and the following month,33 North Korea undertook to seal its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon within 60 days under the supervision of IAEA inspectors, in exchange for an immediate delivery of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, with a further 950,000 tons promised after it disarmed all its nuclear programs.34 The first phase of the sixth round of talks, which took place in March 2007, quickly collapsed as North Korea refused to continue without receiving the frozen Macao bank funds, which they did in the following June. The second phase of the sixth round of talks, which took place in September 2007, basically affirmed the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement and the accord of February 13, 2007.35 As agreed to in this accord, the USA removed North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in October 2008. Reflecting a higher level of institutionalization, the first informal meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Six-Party Talks took place on July 23, 2008 in Singapore. On April 5, 2009, North Korea launched what it referred to as a communications satellite, but which the USA, Japan and South Korea called a ballistic missile. In response, the UN Security Council issued a statement on April 14, 2009 condemning the launch, which led Pyongyang to announce that it was leaving the 6PT for good.

Obstacles to institutionalizing the 6PT The 6PT has established five working groups, on de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula, normalization of North Korea-US relations, normalization of North Korea-Japan relations, economic and energy cooperation, and development of a Northeast Asia peace and security mechanism. Although the 6PT is conducted at the level of the Deputy Foreign Minister of participating countries rather than the lower rank of Assistant Foreign Minister or Ambassador at the earlier 4PT, and China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wu Dawei, its representative to the talks, also heads the pivotal “Korean Peninsula Nuclear Disarmament” Working Group of the 6PT formed in March 2007, the 6PT is still ad hoc or minimally institutionalized. Whether the rounds or sessions of talks can even be held, and what should be on the agenda, very much depends on the whims of the participants, particularly North Korea. There are several reasons for this. First, although the issue of nuclear disarmament of North Korea and the preservation of a nuclear weapons-free Korean peninsula is important to China, the other participants have yet to achieve complete agreement on what should be presented to the North Koreans on the negotiating table, and even on what the ultimate aim of the 6PT is – to induce North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program entirely, or insist on the non-proliferation of these weapons on Pyongyang’s part. Second, even though China was trusted to host the 6PT, there are many heavy players in the forum with their own agenda. North Korea’s regime, an ever-distrusting maverick that seeks above all else to remain in power and preserve its militant nationalism, and is fearful of lacking sufficient public support to survive a military

Table 7.1 Institutionalization of Four-party-talks vs. Six-party-talks: Meetings Four-Party Talks

Six-Party Talks

Level of meetings and number of sub-committees First round: First round: 1997/12/09–10 (Geneva) 2003/8/27–29 (Beijing) Vice Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi Second round:1998/3/16–21(Geneva) Second round: Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Jian 2004/2/25–28/ (Beijing) Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi Third round: Third round: 1998/10/21–24 (Geneva) 2004/6/23–26 (Beijing) Ambassador Qian Yongnian Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi Fourth round: Fourth round: two sessions 1999/1/18–22 (Geneva) 2005/7/26–2005/8/6 (Beijing) Ambassador Qian Yongnian 2005/9/13–2005/9/19 (Beijing) Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei Fifth round: Fifth round: three sessions 1999/4/24–27 (Geneva) 2005/11/9–2005/11/11 (Beijing) Ambassador Qian Yongnian 2006/12/18–2006/12/22 (Beijing) 2007/2/8–2007/2/13 (Beijing) Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei Sixth round: Sixth round: two sessions 1999/8/5–9 (Geneva) 2007/2/19–2007/3/22 (Beijing) Ambassador Qian Yongnian 2007/9/27–2007/9/30 (Beijing) Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei Heads of Delegation Meeting 2007/7/18–2008/7/20 (Beijing) 2008/7/10–2008/7/12 (Beijing) 2008/12/8–2008/12/11 (Beijing) Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei

Table 7.2 Institutionalization of Four-party-talks vs. Six-party-talks: Level of meetings and number of sub-committees Four-party talks

Six-Party Talks

Vice Foreign Minister Meeting (1x) Assistant Foreign Minister Meeting (1x) Ambassador Meeting (4x) Host: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Switzerland

Vice Foreign Minister till December 1, 2008 (6x)

Two regular sub-committees

Host: Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Beijing, PRC Informal meeting of foreign ministers July 23, 2008 (1x) Host: Minister for Foreign Affairs, Singapore Five regular sub-committees

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attack, has demanded US economic aid, security guarantees and diplomatic recognition prior to giving any promises of eliminating its nuclear weapons program, and demonstrated clear reluctance to return to the 6PT after every round and session of talks. The USA requires “complete, verifiable and irreversible” abandonment of North Korea’s highly enriched uranium (HEU) program, as well as its plutonium program, either for weapons-making or electricity generation, before it will provide that country with the security guarantees and diplomatic recognition that it had asked for. It suspects that North Korea has provided Pakistan with the technological assistance to develop its Ghauri missile program, as Pakistan’s Ghauri I missile resembles North Korea’s Nodong I missile.36 Given the commonly held belief by Americans that North Korea is an “evil” totalitarian dictatorship whose motives can always be doubted, political will for dealing or compromising with Pyongyang has always been hard to come by for Washington. Japan also wants to include past cases of abduction of Japanese citizens to North Korea in 6PT discussions, and has, since February 2007, refused to contribute to any energy aid packages that Pyongyang has demanded without any further accounting of the whereabouts of the abductees.37 Whereas the USA and Japan are reserving all their options, China, Russia, and South Korea are against economic sanctions or military strikes against North Korea to coerce it into halting its nuclear program. Both Russia and China were in favor of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, but also wanted the security of the DPRK to be addressed in the talks.38 Rather, South Korea under the government of former President Roh Moo-hyun had indicated that it was willing to supply the North with all of its electricity, and both Russia and China have promised more economic aid if Pyongyang pledges to dismantle its nuclear weapons. South Korea under the current Lee Myung-bak presidency has been more critical of North Korea’s nuclear posturing and human rights stance than the previous regime, and has stopped all non-emergency aid from going to the North. Even then, Seoul is not calling for any economic sanctions or military strikes against Pyongyang. Pyongyang turned down a Chinese draft proposal at the fourth round of the 6PT that would have required it to give up its entire nuclear program, even for electricity generation. Nonetheless, China’s leverage is by far the greatest, because half its foreign aid goes to North Korea and 80 percent of North Korea’s energy need is met by fuel imports from China.39 China considers North Korea a buffer state against US forces in South Korea, and does not wish to see the collapse of the Kim Jong-il regime as a result of US coercive action, either in the form of economic sanctions or military force, which might precipitate tens or hundreds of thousands of North Koreans crossing the Yalu River boundary into China as refugees, or bring US troops to the Chinese border. China prefers weak, but not unstable, states on its borders. Third, the Chinese retain strong memories of Japanese imperialism and their atrocities in China committed during the Sino-Japanese War between 1931 and 1945. As such, China has opposed both the use of the North Korean nuclear issue or preparation against terrorism involving nuclear weapons as means for the Japanese government to justify an increased role for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces

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in regional security and international peacekeeping, as well as any expansion of its military capabilities. The Chinese leadership believes that Japan’s bilateral alliance with the USA will remain the core of Japanese foreign and security policy for years to come, and is worried that the USA will help Japan to build up theater missile defense (TMD) systems using the nuclear threat from North Korea as an excuse. Even so, while the fifth round of talks was held between November 9 and 11, 2005, and the chief US negotiator was charging North Korea for breaking its promise to stop operating its nuclear facilities, China’s chief negotiator agreed to a Japanese suggestion to set up working groups or expert panels to map out scenarios of DPRK nuclear disarmament and inspections, increase aid to Pyongyang, and submit recommendations to the heads of delegations.40 Last, the interests and policies of China and the USA diverge across a number of important regional issues, notably on US arms sales to Taiwan, and China’s increasingly warm ties with ASEAN, Russia, and South Korea. China has refused to participate in the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a coalition of more than 70 states that seeks to interdict and halt international shipments of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons to terrorists, its principal objection being that the PSI violates the Law of the Sea Convention, which forbids interdiction of vessels in international waters, but also because the PSI is seen by Beijing as an initiative to target and exert pressure on Pyongyang.41 China is now the largest trading partner of South Korea, a US ally, and the strong state of bilateral ties has been a key factor in forging the 6PT, as Beijing has closely coordinated its position with Seoul in the talks.42 Washington is finding it increasingly difficult to adjust to Seoul’s increasingly independent voice, notwithstanding the distrust of North Korea’s nuclear intentions by new South Korean President, Lee Myungbak,43 who signed up with the PSI. As admitted by the US Bush administration’s then-National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and the Secretary of State Colin Powell, the 6PT forum, achieved through the diligence of Chinese diplomacy, is the embodiment of the important process that would enmesh regional players in negotiations to realize the “comprehensible, verifiable and irreversible disarmament” of North Korean nuclear weapons, that was the substantive goal of the Bush administration.44 However, the root cause of the North Korea nuclear issue is the mutual distrust, often bordering on open hostility, between the DPRK and the USA, which China can do little to ameliorate, let alone extinguish.

Future of the 6PT and alternative security arrangements for Northeast Asia Following condemnations by the UN Security Council over its rocket launch on April 5, 2009, Pyongyang announced it was withdrawing from the 6PT on April 14, and on May 25, tested a nuclear weapon that was over 20 times more powerful than the one it exploded three years before.45 China stated at the UN that it was “firmly opposed” to the test.46 This test certainly provided a very good pretext for the Chinese, should they need one, to broaden economic sanctions against North Korean companies suspected of proliferation.

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North Korea, albeit with its record of backtracking, may yet decide for its own interest to honor its commitments to denuclearize and return to the 6PT, as other members of the talks have demanded. After a three-day visit to Pyongyang by PRC’s Premier Wen Jiabao from October 6–8, 2009, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il agreed to return to the 6PT sometime in the future.47 If and when that happens, based on past behavior, the possibility that North Korea might renege on the deals it makes at future rounds and sessions of the 6PT cannot be ruled out. Pyongyang apparently views nuclear weapons as a deterrence of last resort against a putative US attack, and is not likely to give them all up. To implement the commitments agreed upon, and work out remaining differences, further rounds of the 6PT will have to be held. Given the saliency of the 6PT, it is worth contemplating raising the current vice-ministerial level of the meeting to a ministerial or even higher rank; however, any talk of constructing a multilateral confidence-and-security-building mechanism for Northeast Asia based on the 6PT is still premature. Although conducting the 6PT requires China’s continuing efforts and attention, whether or not it becomes a success mainly depends on the attitudes of North Korea and the USA, and even that of South Korea. China can, at best, be an effective middleman. As things stand, North Korea’s conflict with the international community over nuclear weapons makes it an impossible, or at least difficult, partner for economic cooperation. Yet the economies of China, Japan, and South Korea are being rapidly integrated, with heavy Japanese and Korean investments in China, and China has become the largest trading partner of both Japan and Korea. According to one Chinese assessment, in 2008, intra-East Asian trade occupied about 90 percent of the total trade volume of Asia and Oceania.48 China has hoped to start negotiations on a China-Korea-Japan Free Trade Agreement, establish a regular mechanism for trade negotiations,49 and attract more Japanese and Korean investments to China’s Northeast (formerly Manchuria) to regenerate this heavy industry and high unemployment “rust belt” of steel plants, iron ore mines, oil refineries, and shipbuilding docks. Therefore, it would make good sense to complement such fast-gathering Northeast Asian economic integration with regular channels for regional strategic cooperation, the sooner the better. One of the 6PT working groups already deals with the development of a peace and security mechanism for Northeast Asia. As such, efforts by China to institutionalize the 6PT as much as possible along this line would reflect its purpose and participation to construct a lasting security arrangement on the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia flowing out of the 6PT. Of course, this may not be the only security construct for the region. Former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun had suggested in 2007 that, as the 1953 armistice was a multilateral agreement, a peace treaty to replace it should also be a multilateral one, to be signed by the principal belligerents in the Korean War, USA, China and the two Koreas, thus making the USA and China virtual guarantors of the treaty’s standing.50 He reasoned that, although the nuclear issues on the Korean peninsula should be resolved within the framework of the 6PT, parallel discussion on a permanent peace treaty to replace the armistice

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should take place involving the four participants in a revived 4PT.51 Subsequent to this proposal, South Korea, the USA and China agreed to hold 4PT at the level of Foreign Minister to discuss a peace treaty for the Korean peninsula, but North Korea did not show any interest.52 If and when it does, this could be the appropriate forum to negotiate a permanent peace and neutralization of the Korean peninsula. Of course, the peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue must be the sine qua non for building an enduring peace regime on the Korean peninsula. Another security arrangement could be the Northeast Asia Cooperative Dialogue (NEACD). The NEACD came out of a suggestion by Professor Susan Shirk, as Director of the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), to host an annual track-two conference on security in Northeast Asia, beginning in 1993, with two academics and two government officials from each of the 6PT countries; since 2002, the DPRK has occasionally sent participants to NEACD, which made the participating nations in the NEACD identical to those in the 6PT.53 An emerging confidence- and security-building mechanism (CSBM) for Northeast Asia could involve the merging of the 6PT and NEACD, starting from a regular security dialogue among senior officials in charge of Asia in the foreign ministries of the six countries, with regular meetings among their foreign ministers, to identify and discuss security issues to be addressed by regional cooperation. With growing economic and political interdependence between the PRC and South Korea, US and North Korean commitment to normalize their political and diplomatic relationship would negate the core assumption of the US-South Korea alliance and quite probably lead to a major reduction of US military forces or even their outright withdrawal from South Korea, thus reconstituting a major reconfiguration of Northeast Asian security.54 Yet, should Pyongyang claim avowed status as a nuclear weapons state, it would be courting an attack by US military forces, or at least the strengthening of missile defense capabilities by the USA and Japan, and thus pose an acute challenge to Chinese security interests, aside from becoming a serious embarrassment to China’s efforts to denuclearize North Korea through hosting the 6PT. Hence, the 6PT will continue to offer ample opportunities as well as significant risks for the Chinese leadership.

8

China’s venture into the Pacific

Introduction: China’s incipient rivalry with Japan over the Pacific islands China’s relations with Pacific Island Countries (PICs), as seen from its recent diplomatic endeavors in the Pacific Ocean region or Oceania, and developed through the China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation (CPIC) Forum, constitute a foreign policy approach that stands apart from its usual style of advancing and institutionalizing neighborly interactions. This approach to diplomacy is tripartite: to engage with different players, to tackle different issues, and to use different modus operandi. As to engaging with different players, the CPIC Forum is the only regional forum for cooperation and economic development initiated by China that includes itself as a continental state, with all other participants being island countries that are postcolonial creations with which China had no official relations before their independence. As to tackling different issues, unlike other regional arrangements in which China actively configures or participates, the CPIC Forum is one in which aid, fisheries, and tourism figure prominently, as these are economic aspects held in particular significance by the governments of the PICs. As to using different modus operandi, this CPIC Forum is the first of its type to involve China and the PICs exclusively, without the participation of the USA, Japan or Australia – countries usually regarded as the traditional powers in the Pacific/Oceania – in a relationship of one large to many small entities. This tripartite approach to relations with PICs clearly establishes China as the leading country in the CPIC Forum, and also the newest power to be reckoned with in the diplomatic and economic spheres of the region. Even so, the initiation and development of the CPIC Forum was in a sense an imitation of, and also a catalyst for, active Japanese involvement in cultivating its diplomatic and economic role and influence in the Pacific. In the first years of the twenty-first century, the Pacific Ocean is already turning out to be an arena where the vision of an economically resurgent Japan as a “normal nation,” promoting nationalism domestically and extending its influence abroad, meets up with the strategy of peaceful rising (so far) and projection of “soft” (diplomatic, ideological, and cultural sources of) power by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), fortified by an expanding economy. Japan is returning

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to the region with vigor since its defeat in the Second World War, and China is staking a claim to a share of the influence in, and resources from, the Pacific islands. As the worldwide quest for raw material and food supplies by both countries gets more pressing, the vast Pacific becomes, in a sense, a treasure trove, into which the hands of Japan and China can be expected to dip even further. Japan and China are clearly in the early stages of a full-scale competition for diplomatic influence over the island countries of the Pacific Ocean, fisheries and mineral resources from these states, and even some strategic presence around them. As such, the main target of China’s diplomacy in the Pacific is, and will very much be, Japan, with Taiwan being a secondary consideration.

Pacific Island Countries (PICs) in the South Pacific Forum (SPF)/Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) The point of entry for the involvement of both China and Japan in the region is a political association of Pacific countries known as the South Pacific Forum (SPF) when it was formed in 1971, but changed its name to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in 2000, to reflect more accurately the geographical position of its members, some of which are located north of the equator. The PIF consists today of 16 member states located in the Pacific Ocean. They are Australia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Apart from Australia and New Zealand, the rest are sometimes referred to collectively as the PICs. New Caledonia and French Polynesia, as overseas departments of France, had observer status, until they became associate members of the Forum in 2006. As natural resources, commercial fishing, starchy food, and tourism are the main revenue earners of the PICs, the Forum presents a channel for its membership of small island countries to seek trade, aid, and other means for realizing security and development. The Forum also presents potential or current trading partners, investors, aid donors, or regional powers with affiliation to legitimize their ostensibly disinterested roles in the Pacific. This medium attracted keen and competing external attention, not least from the two largest powers in Asia that have yet to develop a comfortable relationship with one another, and was first exploited by the Japanese for their purposes, and then later by the Chinese for theirs. With an annual average per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of around US$1300, one common characteristic of the small Pacific island economies is their heavy reliance on foreign aid money to finance development programs. Indeed, the ratio of developmental assistance to GDP is around 20 percent for most of these countries.1 Thus, foreign aid forms an important component of government budgets. Developmental concerns exhibited by the Forum would usually include organizing meetings with international aid agencies and potential foreign government donors to arrange for monetary and technical assistance to member countries. Underlying the need for development cooperation between PICs and foreign partners, PIF members hold talks with their dialogue partners at

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the vice-ministerial level at the end of each annual Forum meeting. The PIF now has 13 dialogue partners, the more economically significant of which include the USA, UK, European Union, China, Japan, and South Korea.2 The critical issue of foreign aid or developmental assistance and the institution of dialogue partnerships for the Forum provided a fertile arena for China and Japan to pursue their aid or monetary diplomacy in the Pacific region, that is, until first Japan, and then China, developed a more comfortable channel to deal with these PICs directly, in structuring a bilateral framework of one-to-many relations, without the presence of the stronger regional countries like Australia or New Zealand.

Structuring Japan and PICs relations: the Japan–PIF summits The Pacific Ocean region is obviously of front-yard importance to Japan. Since 1989, Japan has been attending the post-Forum dialogues. In addition, the Chairperson of the PIF is invited to Japan each year as a guest of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an exchange of views and opinions. In 1997, Japan initiated the first Japan-South Pacific Forum (later Japan-PIF) Summit Meeting, to be held once every three years at prime ministerial level, to further cooperation with, and offer assistance to, PICs, particularly in the areas of fisheries conservation, developing information technology and internet communications for distancelearning, eradicating infectious tropical diseases, providing technical assistance, and building school infrastructure. Japan has to date held four more summit meetings with PIF countries, in 2000, 2003, 2006, and 2009, all hosted in Japan. Between 1987 and 1997, Japan gave US$150–200 million annually in Official Development Assistance (ODA) to PICs.3 From 1998 to 2005, due to its economic difficulties, the average yearly amount was reduced to below US$105 million.4 Still, during this period, Japan was the second-largest aid donor country to the region, after Australia. In 2000, Tokyo established a “Good Will Trust Fund” with US$10 million to finance development projects for Forum countries in the “newer” areas of the environment, energy, and tourism.5

Structuring China and PICs relations: the CPIC Forum If Japan had counted on instituting an exclusive forum with PICs to advance its “aid diplomacy” to buy itself influence in the Pacific, it soon found that it was not the only significant player in this game. The PRC was stymied in the 1970s and 1980s by a form of “checkbook diplomacy” conducted to acquire or maintain diplomatic relations with PICs by the Republic of China on Taiwan, a country that the PRC does not recognize and would like to absorb. As such, it was not until 1990 that China managed to get itself invited to join in with the post-Forum dialogues. Two decades of steady and even impressive economic growth since “reform and opening” in the late 1970s have provided the financial muscle and diplomatic influence for China to be more active in the Pacific Ocean region. In 2000, apparently taking a leaf out of Japan’s book, China established a “China-Pacific

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Islands Forum Cooperation Fund” to encourage bilateral economic cooperation. In 2002, the Fund offered the PIF US$1 million to establish a Trade Office in Beijing. Moreover, China began offering capital to finance construction projects in PICs, which was, in a sense, an announcement of its arrival in the region. China built the sports stadium in Fiji for the 2003 South Pacific Games, paid for the building of government offices and a swimming complex in Samoa, and the parliamentary building of Vanuatu, donated a ferry to Kiribati and cargo boats to Micronesia, provided engineers to pave roads, and sent agricultural specialists to help develop the economies of the Pacific islands.6 China is now the only foreign country operating its own television stations in Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu, broadcasting the official China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 9, in English no less.7 Whereas Japan maintained only one embassy throughout the Pacific islands, in Fiji, China has established embassies in Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa, PNG, Micronesia, and Fiji. It is a measure of Chinese influence in Kiribati such that when that country switched diplomatic relations from China to Taiwan in 2004, some “care-taking” members of their former embassy refused to vacate the premises, and the Kiribati government has been powerless to force them out. In fact, Kiribati’s President Anote Tong, a descendant of Chinese immigrants, has suggested that the Chinese are staying put because they are waiting for a change in government and the restoration of diplomatic relations.8 What happened at the end of that year also seemed to have demonstrated China’s rising sway over Vanuatu, for when its prime minister Serge Vohor decided to establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan for US$28 million in aid over the next five years, the Chinese government reportedly convinced Vohor’s cabinet to topple him and restore official ties with China by offering assistance of US$32 million over the following year, at the same time that Australia was threatening to withdraw monetary assistance to Vanuatu over alleged corruption.9 Uncomfortable with sharing the podium with Taiwan at the post-Forum dialogues as a fellow dialogue partner of the PIF, as China does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign entity, Beijing initiated its own forum in April 2006 with the eight PICs with which it has diplomatic recognition and which support its “One China Policy” – Cook Islands, Fiji, Micronesia, Niue, PNG, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu – and whose leaders have been invited to Beijing at one time or another. Known as the “China–Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum,” or CPIC Forum for short, it is to be held alternately in China and a Pacific island country once every four years, at the heads of government level (Table 8.1). The inaugural “China–Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum” was held in Fiji, with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao representing China. Under an “Action Plan of Economic Development and Cooperation,” China promised to provide a wide-ranging package of economic assistance to the eight Pacific island countries, as Wen pointedly noted, without any political conditions attached.10 To these countries China announced the extension of about

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Table 8.1 China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum Summit level First Head of Government Meeting April 5–6, 2006 Suva, Fiji PRC represented by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao Ministerial level First Investment, Trade and Tourism Ministerial Conference 7–10 September 2008 Xiamen, Fujian, PRC Attended by relevant government ministers and representatives of the PRC and PIF states with which it has diplomatic relations

US$375 million of preferential loans for four years from 2006 to boost cooperation in natural resources development, agriculture, fisheries construction and tourism.11 Starting from July 1, 2006, China granted zero tariff treatment to 278 tariff lines of products originated from Samoa and Vanuatu, canceled mature debts of 170 million Renminbi (RMB) owed by the two countries, and also reached agreements with Fiji and PNG on a moratorium on interest-free loans due at the end of 2005.12 Monetary assistance aside, China also agreed at the CPIC Forum to provide free anti-malaria medicine worth 1 million RMB to PNG and other affected countries over the following three years. China gave Approved Destination Status for these eight countries to would-be Chinese tourists.13 It also promised to take in 2,000 government officials and technical staff from these countries to be trained in China over the next three years.14 China would also establish a specific fund to encourage Chinese business investments in the region. The next CPIC Forum meeting, scheduled for 2010, will be held in Beijing, the PRC capital. Through this whole series of economic measures and sudden strong showing at a Pacific venue, China is obviously aiming to increase its diplomatic standing and political influence in Oceania. If there had been any doubts before, the Fiji Forum affirmed China as a major player in the region, by making it the thirdlargest aid donor to PICs overnight. Bilateral trade volume between China and the PICs exceeded US$1.5 billion in 2007, and is expected to exceed US$2 billion in 2008.15 By acting as a rising Pacific power, China is in a way challenging Japan’s position as the principal Asian leader and benefactor of the island countries there. China’s April 2006 CPIC Forum apparently touched a raw nerve with the Japanese government, so much so that at the fourth Japan-PIF Meeting just one month later, Japan promised to increase its ODA to PICs from a budgeted US$279 million to US$357 million,16 to match China’s contribution to the region to some extent.

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Japan’s motives for engaging the PICs As international relations are seldom, if ever, founded on an altruistic basis, the PICs obviously have clear political, economic, and even security values for Japan and China. For Japan, there are clearly two major values. i) Acquiring fishery resources Japan is one of the largest fishing nations in the world in terms of catch, and PICs have huge marine resources such as tuna and bonito. The tuna industry, in particular, is a major pillar of the economies of the PICs, and, as such, the PICs are of paramount importance as major exporters of fresh tuna to Japan, supplying about one-third of Japan’s domestic market.17 Hence, Japan has developed a particular interest in offering technical assistance to foster the fisheries industry in countries such as Kiribati or Samoa. Indeed, the original motivation and rationale for Japan’s aid to the Pacific islands was resource security and, specifically, secure access for its fishing fleets to the region’s tuna stocks.18 Japan’s “aid diplomacy” truly took off in 1975, “to cope with the evolution of the then new international 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) marine regime.”19 As the EEZs of countries in the Pacific are spread over 30 million square kilometers and cover 25 percent of the Earth’s sea area20 (see Figure 8.1 for EEZ boundaries of PICs), their enactment by PICs enclosed Japan’s most productive fishing grounds, affecting an estimated 36 percent of the total Japanese catch. There is also a Chinese angle to Japan’s worries. Bureaucrats from Japan’s Fisheries Agency increasingly feel that they are facing a growing war for dwindling marine resources with China, arguing in 2007 that, although Japan catches 6 million tons of fish per year, the figure for China is 40 million, even if some Chinese and Taiwanese fishermen help supply the Japanese tuna market.21 ii) Increasing negotiating power in the International Whaling Commission In 1982, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) passed a global moratorium on commercial whaling. Japan has been very disappointed with this ban because it claims that the consumption of whales is an integral part of its food culture, and some of its politicians and parliamentarians, like the former Prime Minister, Aso Taro, have taken a nationalistic “sovereign right” stance on this issue.22 However, lifting this prohibition would require the affirmative votes of three-quarters of the IWC membership. As Nauru, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Solomon Islands are members of this commission, part of the unstated but widely understood purpose of providing huge financial allowances to these countries was to move them to drop the ban on commercial whaling activities. Since the June 2006 International Whaling Conference, all six Pacific members have voted for the suspension on commercial whaling to be lifted.23

Figure 8.1 Map of Pacific Islands Forum countries Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, retrieved November 30, 2007, http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Forum

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China’s motives for engaging the PICs Since the turn of this century, promoting China’s own international status through peaceful means as a “responsible power” has been an important foreign policy aim for the Chinese leadership.24 China considers itself a developing country, and as such a friend and fellow of developing countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Pacific. Although the Chinese government has no doubt considered it good diplomacy and a form of great power responsibility to assist PICs in their economic development, it also has its own clear agenda in engaging the region, of which there are principally four aims. i) Competing with Taiwan to secure diplomatic recognition Wherever and whenever it could, China has sought to diminish if not eliminate altogether Taiwan’s diplomatic profile, and the Pacific islands region is no exception. By the middle of 2009, only 23 countries maintained diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but more than one-quarter of them are in the Pacific Ocean, and Taiwan has quasi-official status as a dialogue partner of the PIF. Incidentally, Palau, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Nauru are also the most impoverished countries in the region, so it is not surprising that a primary purpose of maintaining good official relations with Taiwan is for these six countries to benefit from Taiwan’s financial largess in funding projects for economic development or candidates for high political office. Yet, given the rising appetite of the Chinese for fish, timber, and tropical fruits, commercial advantage will be a major reason pulling PICs closer to China, and if this proves insufficient, Beijing has shown that it is also prepared to whip out its checkbook now and then. Beijing persuaded Nauru to switch diplomatic relations from Taipei in July 2002 for a reported aid offer of US$60 million and debt relief of US$77 million, only to see its new government recognize Taipei again in May 2005 for helping it pay off a debt of US$13.5 million.25 In September 2005, China provided US$500,000 to PICs to get them to reject, in this case successfully, Taiwan’s application for membership in the South Pacific Tourism Organization.26 China also made renouncing diplomatic relations with Taiwan and adherence to Beijing’s “One China Policy” a prerequisite for participating in and benefiting from the April 2006 “China–Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum.” As it turned out, no country renounced official ties with Taiwan to gain admittance to the CPIC Forum, but given the importance of financial aid or debt renunciation to the budgets of regional governments, and China’s determination to cause the severance of all official links between Taiwan and any country in the Pacific, if Beijing’s carrot gets any bigger, this could all change in the future. Not to be outdone, Taiwan organized the first Taiwan Pacific Allies Summit in Palau in September 2006, bringing then-Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian together with the heads of the six Pacific island states having diplomatic ties

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with Taipei.27 Taiwan subsequently promised its biggest diplomatic ally in the region, the Solomon Islands, US$100 million in development aid for 2008.28 Taiwan’s aid flows to the Pacific are seen by some Japanese as encouraging fiscal irresponsibility, if not outright corruption, on the part of island governments. However, its effects on Japan are at least minor. The same cannot be said for aid flows from China, which are already contributing to about one-third of the region’s funding,29 and only becoming increasingly more diverse, substantial, and tangible. This China-Taiwan diplomatic aid bidding rivalry is proving to be a catalyst for the Japanese to become more politically, economically, and financially active in the Pacific, which, in turn, is driving greater Chinese involvement. ii) Leveraging the strategic value of the Pacific islands The Pacific islands lie astride China’s sea lanes of transport with Australia, New Zealand, and South America. As China has no blue water navy or aircraft carriers yet, maintaining good relations with PICs are necessary to ensure the safety and security of these sea lanes for Chinese merchant vessels. Moreover, the geographic positions of these countries around the equator have military value for China, as they are located in an ideal zone for launching rockets and parking satellites in orbit. In 1997, China constructed a satellite tracking station on Tarawa atoll of Kiribati, which could be used to monitor US missile tests in the nearby Marshall Islands, or assist in the development of a Chinese space warfare program. Unfortunately for China, after Kiribati switched official recognition to Taiwan in 2004, Beijing had to remove the station’s equipment back to China,30 presumably to prevent it from falling into Taiwanese hands. Still, for the past one-and-a-half decades, the Chinese military has been developing and acquiring, from Russia and elsewhere, sophisticated weaponry such as mid-air refueling technology, the latest nuclear submarines, more accurate and longer-distance Submarine-Launch Ballistic Missiles and an increasing quantity of land-based anti-ship missiles to compensate for existing Chinese naval weaknesses. Official figures for China’s military expenditure for fiscal year 2008–2009 came to US$58.8 billion, an increase of 19.4 percent compared to the fiscal year before.31 China has ambitions to develop a blue water navy and may acquire a military base in the Pacific Ocean to increase its military influence, particularly in the region west of the Aleutians, down through the Marianas, to the eastern edge of PNG, referred to in Chinese military parlance as the “second island chain.”32 To reach this goal, China is also providing military assistance to several Pacific island countries such as Fiji, PNG, Vanuatu and Tonga in the form of training and logistic support.33 Any rise in China’s strategic profile in the region will certainly elevate its status as a Pacific power, but it may also unsettle the Pacific regional order characterized as an “American lake,” long dominated by the USA and its military allies, Japan and Australia. More than anything else, it is to preserve and help the USA co-manage this order, by keeping China out of the blue-ocean Pacific or minimizing its role and influence there as best as possible, that Japan came to an

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agreement with Australia in March 2007 to promote closer cooperation with each other on military training and exercises, air and maritime security, and disaster relief.34 When rioters looted and burned Chinese-owned shops and attacked Chinese people in the Solomon Islands and Tonga in 2006, a regional police force led by Australia under the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) restored order and protected Chinese migrants in the Solomon Islands, although in the case of Tonga, the Chinese government chartered a transport aircraft to evacuate its stranded nationals.35 In response to a similar situation in the future, or if important Chinese interests in the region – mines, timber concessions, or fishing fleets – were under threat from mob violence or government confiscation, China may decide that it has enough will and capacity to undertake such a policing operation itself. iii) Operating businesses and acquiring natural resources Over 3,000 state-owned and private Chinese companies have established themselves in the Pacific, with investments worth more than US$1 billion in hotels, plantations, garment factories, commercial fishing, and logging operations.36 The state-owned China Metallurgical Construction Corporation is putting US$650 million into PNG’s Ramu nickel and cobalt mine,37 and perhaps as much as US$800 million,38 the biggest single Chinese investment in the PICs, to ensure the supply of such metals to feed China’s ravenous economic development. Not surprisingly then, Chinese aid to the largest Pacific island country, PNG, is now second only to Australia.39 Whereas Japanese aid to PICs focuses on grants for fisheries and technological projects and technical cooperation through the dispatch of technical specialists and volunteers,40 Chinese aid tends to be tied to the sourcing of materials and labor from China itself.41 Riding on the backs of Chinese enterprises, in recent years, the migration of Chinese nationals to Pacific nations through means legal or otherwise has been increasing, leading to a rise in the activities and influence of criminal triads and human smugglers. Paradoxically, this offers both the Chinese and island governments the opportunity to cooperate on intelligence gathering and exchange and training of police personnel, and the opportunity to augment China’s influence in the region. Furthermore, the spending power of the expected rising number of Chinese tourists is a major economic attraction for Pacific island countries and diplomatic capital for China. The increasing physical presence of the Chinese all adds up to a relatively reduced visibility for the Japanese. To ensure continuing access to fisheries resources from a nearby patch of the Pacific Ocean, China has disputed Japan’s claim of an estimated 400,000 kilometers square EEZ around its uninhabited Okinotori coral reefs, located midway between Taiwan and Guam in the north Pacific. Chinese diplomats have since 2004 insisted that the reefs are rocks and not islets, as the Japanese have argued.42 Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, of which both Japan and China are signatories, “rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone.”

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iv) Gaining reliable support in the United Nations As the United Nations (UN) operates on the principle of “one country, one vote” in the General Assembly, even for China as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, support from the dozen Pacific island countries represented in the world body may be needed if any upcoming vote for a UN motion promises to be close and against the interests of Beijing. This could be a proposal to admit Taiwan to a UN-affiliated agency like the World Health Organization, which, if successful, will greatly raise the island nation’s diplomatic profile, or a plan to change the structure or composition of the UN Security Council to admit Japan as a permanent member. In this sense, these countries are worth China’s courting.43

The future of China’s Pacific islands diplomacy Although it may not be obvious for a few more years, China, by giving assistance to the PICs that are clearly generous in terms of their per capita population, is in the early stages of a full-scale competition with Japan, its closest Asian rival, for influence in and benefits from the region. China’s emphasis on providing large-scale infrastructure aid clearly rubs up against what has been a long tradition in Japan’s ODA. Whereas Japanese aid to PICs averaged around US$100 million per year from 1998 to 2005, it rose unexpectedly to about US$125 million in 2006 alone, due primarily to the first CPIC Forum taking place that year. At the 2009 Japan-PIF Summit, Japan allotted 50 billion Yen (US$526 million) in ODA for PIF nations over the next three years, and 6.8 billion Yen (US$71.5 million) in aid to facilitate solar power generation and seawater desalination.44 For their own purposes, both Tokyo and Beijing are eager to gain the diplomatic support and develop better economic relations with these islands, and the increase in their interest and involvement contrasts quite keenly with the laissez-faire attitude that the USA has adopted toward the region, apart from its military uses for Guam,45 and assistance to its three former trust territories of FSM, the Marshall Islands, and Palau.46 Yet, the preferences of Japan and China to augment their presence in the Pacific through bilateral Japan-PIF summit meetings and CPIC forums, rather than joining the PIF, have demonstrated the desire of these two countries to constitute and maintain an asymmetrical power relationship in their favor with respect to the island nations. This is more so the case with China than Japan, as unlike China, Japan is still willing to hold its bilateral one-to-many meetings with PICs within the rubric of the PIF, rather than through an institutional structure of its own making, such as the CPIC Forum. In a further move to consolidate the CPIC Forum, as well as promote China-PICs exchanges and cooperation in trade, investment, tourism, agriculture, fisheries, transportation, finance, and human resource development, the first “Investment, Trade and Tourism Ministerial Conference of the China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum” took place on September 7–10, 2008 in China’s Xiamen. It was attended by relevant government ministers from China and all the PICs with

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which China has diplomatic relations, together with an official representative from New Zealand.47 This conference may be the beginning of a sustained attempt by China to draw Australia and New Zealand into the Chinese economic orbit in an institutionalized setting through an expanded CPIC Forum. The two antipodean countries are becoming increasingly important as resource areas for livestock, agricultural and, particularly Australia, mineral imports into China. As, aside from Australia and New Zealand, the populations of the PICs are a little more than 8 million, and trade is expected to stay relatively insignificant for these countries, “aid diplomacy” will remain of paramount importance to buy the goodwill and cooperation of island governments. Furthermore, China is now Australia’s largest trading partner and the Australian government would be reluctant to be seen as adopting a foreign policy position that is overtly against Chinese interests. Still, as China announced plans to train senior military officers from Fiji, Tonga, and PNG, Japan became the first non-PIF country to contribute peacekeepers to RAMSI, an offer that was welcomed by Australia and the PIF.48 Given this precedence, it would be difficult for any country to reprimand China should its government decide that Chinese People’s Liberation Army forces ought to offer its services to the Solomon Islands or other PICs for purposes of peacekeeping, should the situation warrant. Premier Wen of China has referred to his country’s increased involvement in the Pacific region as a “strategic decision.”49 Indeed, the growing presence of China in the Pacific can only change the circumstances against Japan’s favor, as it has eclipsed Taiwan’s role in the region. In a remark widely interpreted as a reference to China, a spokesman from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently warned that “Pacific island countries should not be a pawn for any major power at the periphery of the region.”50 The PRC, as it claims Taiwan as a part of China, would of course disagree that it lies at the periphery of the Pacific region any more than Japan does. In any case, with the participation of China in this Pacific “Great Game,” countries in the region will have more choices in terms of selecting foreign policy positions, demanding even more generous or untied aid packages, setting the prices of their fish or other exports, or deflecting foreign criticisms of government accountability. This is particularly so as the Chinese government has exhibited scarce concern over issues of democratic accountability or financial irregularities involving aid monies in its conduct of foreign relations. In time, Pacific island governments may learn to play off Japan against China, as they have been doing with Taiwan and China, but they should meanwhile be watchful against undue foreign influence over their own political processes or excessive immigration leading to the loss of job opportunities for the locals. The growing strength of China’s diplomacy with respect to the Pacific islands for resources and influence will put pressure on traditional aid donors like Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the USA to raise the monetary amount that they are prepared to give to recover their hitherto dominance over the region. These countries may also have to de-emphasize “good governance,” or democratic accountability, respect for human rights, and eradication of corruption, as conditions for

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providing assistance, unless they can win China, and Taiwan, over to their views on aid-giving. This would not be easy, given the stakes involved and China’s long-standing and much-touted foreign policy principle of “non-interference in the domestic affairs of states,” which advantages China in dealing with relatively authoritarian regimes in the Pacific and sometimes earns it the appreciation of the local public because it appears respectful of national sovereignty. As a case in point, China committed new soft loans to Fiji after the country’s military coup in December 2006, as Australia, New Zealand and the USA imposed a freeze on aid to the new military regime to promote a return to democracy.51 Although the cohesion of the PIF might have suffered a little with half its membership agreeing to meet regularly with the Chinese premier and his government ministers within the rubric of the CPIC Forum, the PICs as a whole are the clear winners of China’s increasingly active and (albeit as yet rudimentarily) structured participation in the region’s diplomacy. Although the economic and strategic bearing of these countries will only get harder to predict, what is certain is that their foreign policy orientations are moving toward Asia as a whole, and that the comprehensive involvement of China in the Pacific region will only deepen in the future.

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Evaluating China’s approaches to institutionalizing regional multilateralism The new multilateral regional institutions explored in the previous chapters may or may not presage the emergence of a new diplomatic order in Asia centered on China, but they have certainly redirected China’s attention from the amorphous “third world” and its preoccupation with relations with the USA and other world powers to its home region of Asia and the Western Pacific. Given China’s previous relative diplomatic isolation and its inexperience in institutionalized cooperation, these institutions, based not on common political ideologies but on a shared sense of economic interest and collective security among national elites, and an embryonic complex balance of power involving China and several other major regional states, have provided mechanisms for China and its neighbors to work together and mitigate incipient conflicts. Positive policy outcomes for China from the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), 10 + 1/10 + 3 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in particular have strengthened the voice of integrationists or institutionalists within the country, leading to calls for further active Chinese participation in regional multilateral initiatives.1 The ultimate purpose of institutionalization is to give prolonged expression to an organization’s shared norms and interests, and also at the same time, structure the organization’s shared norms and interests, by regularizing mid- to high-level contacts, maintaining and expanding areas of cooperation, providing channels for airing and addressing differences, and presenting a united front of sorts toward non-members. Institution-building was a key feature of European integration, from the experience of which the theories and measures of institution-building, as pursued in this book, were derived. The European Union (EU) developed a multinational entity in charge of defending economic integration within a democratic framework, a mechanism for compensating the losers, and a common jurisdiction to resolve outstanding issues.2 Its federal structure has a system of laws that are uniformly applied throughout the EU and subjected to interpretation by a European Court of Justice, a directly elected European Parliament to make those laws and approve the EU budget, and an executive European Commission with the authority to conduct foreign affairs and external trade negotiations on the

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organization’s behalf. Due to cultural differences and political concerns, the initiatives to achieve integrative regional processes in Asia may never be as legalistic in approach, bureaucratic in structure, intrusive in intent, or cohesive in outcome as those of Europe. Yet, since the mid-1990s, not only has the political will to undertake such initiatives occurred among regional governments, but also a lot of the push to stabilize and coordinate economic and security policies seems to have come from China, and despite its ever-present sovereignty concerns, so has much of the push for the institutionalization of these regional processes. Comparing the measures of institutionalization between the Six-Party Talks (6PT), ASEAN + China, and SCO, and their respective structural developments from the Four-Party Talks, ASEAN + 3, and Shanghai Five, all of which were forums that the Chinese leadership has been very involved in crafting and nurturing, in terms of number of state participants; frequency, levels and regularity of meetings; physical structure (e.g. Headquarter buildings, Secretariat, and staff); age, number, type, and level of representation of committees, sub-committees, working groups and commissions; and multiplicity of goals and functions; it is clear that, although the degree of institutionalization has demonstrated a continuously upward trend, the progress has been potholed. Although many obstacles to multilateralism and the development of more elaborate and structured institutions in the Asia and the Pacific have been reduced for China, serious impediments remain. China’s involvements in the regional multilateral arrangements discussed have been presented in rough chronological order principally for the purpose of straightforward exposition. It should be clear from the investigation that the depth and breadth of its participation do not reflect the duration of its membership, but rather how pressing are the issues that a specific forum is set up to deal with to China and the other participating states, and perhaps more importantly, how welldisposed the major and middle powers are toward China and fellow participants. Although China has tried to demonstrate its benign intentions in having its rising power channeled through institutionalizing regional multilateral organizations, the record of such determined attempts is uneven. China has been remarkably successful in its push for a high degree of institutionalization with the SCO because the only other major participant, Russia, is a friend and “strategic ally,” political elites share an authoritarian style of governance, and member states have a salient accord in pursuing the common aims of conducting joint anti-terrorist exercises, trade promotion, energy cooperation, interdiction of smuggled narcotics from Afghanistan, and in an unspoken way, stopping the spread of US influence in Central Asia. The semi-institutionalized character of the ASEAN + 3 principally reflects both the consultative nature of the forum that leaders of ASEAN and China, Japan and South Korea have decided upon, and the competition for influence between China and Japan. To increase cooperation with ASEAN without the presence of foreign powers, China has worked toward institutionalizing, within the rubric of ASEAN + 3, a separate China-ASEAN axis that it is confident of dominating and has a more focused bilateral agenda on issue areas of greater interest and importance to China, such as securing a free trade agreement (FTA)

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with ASEAN and diffusing tension with claimant states over the disputed South China Sea islands. The conception is deeply rooted in the discourse of Southeast Asian and Chinese officialdoms, that the pursuit of institutional integration involves teleology: of deepening economic integration leading to confidencebuilding and mutual trust, spurring states into functional cooperation over security issues, and ultimately realizing a common identity for a coherent regional community.3 This progression is over-idealized and not necessarily a matter of course. Considerations of political priorities and elite interests must always be taken into account. Apart from ASEAN + China, the Chinese leadership may already be envisaging another direction in free trade cooperation, and perhaps eventually a common market, with itself as the core, or at least the biggest economic partner with the most say, and this is the China–Japan–South Korea trilateral leaders’ summit. As to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), although there is broad agreement by member economies on the merits of freer trade, aside from that, they share few specific objectives, concerns and norms among themselves and with China, which is actually seen to be a constraining force on investment and financial liberalization. Although the forum may be considered semi-structured in reflecting the desires of the USA, Australia, Canada and Japan, institutionalization efforts clearly peaked in the early years when their “Western” vision held sway. APEC is probably the most structurally complex regional arrangement examined here, bar the SCO, yet it also seems to be the most ineffective in attaining its own stated goals. This bears out an important point that requires emphasizing in the study: more formally institutionalized regional groups do not necessarily produce more effective cooperation;4 the relative power of friend or foe and the harmonization of interests in these arrangements are crucial. Even with working groups, dialogues and meetings, ARF may be considered a minimally institutionalized security dialogue mechanism because its 25 member states, spanning the entire Pacific Rim, do not share a common threat or way of handling security concerns. China does not appear at all keen at this stage to study ways of involving member states in adopting preventive diplomacy measures, a key phase for the evolution of the Forum, which might allow for the participation of third parties in pre-empting or resolving a crisis that involves China, and which might even be provoked by it. Comparing the SCO and the ARF, it is apparent that the difference in the degree of structuralization or institutionalization exhibited, by these the only two regular security arrangements in Asia and the Pacific, demonstrates on the one hand, the facilitating role of China and the presence of many common interests and threats facing the governments of SCO member states that resulted in similar norms of behavior and purposes within the SCO; and, on the other hand, the obstructionist role of China and the near absence of common interests or threats facing the governments of ARF member states that resulted in divergent norms of behavior and purposes within the ARF. Up until 1996, APEC and the ARF provided the only regional assemblies that China could use as platforms to raise its diplomatic profile, discuss trade and

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security matters, and upgrade its economic and strategic relations with surrounding countries. However, as this is no longer the case, and also because the distances between member states of these trans-Pacific or trans-continental forums are too vast for similar external, economic, or security orientations to evolve, both the APEC and the ARF forums now represent for China and the other major players like Japan, the USA and Russia a secondary or fall-back position, when compared to the World Trade Organization, bilateral free trade or defense agreements, and other collective security arrangements. The 6PT is only nominally institutionalized because, although the issue of nuclear disarmament of North Korea is important to China, North Korea itself is both a feared and fearful maverick, there are many heavy players with their own agenda in the forum, particularly the USA, Japan, and South Korea, to which North Korea’s bomb and missile tests may actually appear more threatening than to China, and the participants have yet to resolve many issues pertaining to North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons program, particularly with regards to the incentive structure for negotiating with Pyongyang. Finally, with Pacific island countries, China seems prepared to take on the role of a challenger to established Japanese, Taiwanese, and Western interests, particularly in the diplomatic and economic arena, by steadily but quietly augmenting its own interests and influence in the Pacific/Oceania region through increasing trade, investment, migration, and aid dispensation by means of institutionalizing its newly minted “China–Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum.” There seems to have been much agreement among scholars in the field of integration studies that increasing the number of participants in a multilateral institution will lead to a decrease in its effectiveness, with more players pursuing their own agenda within the group, increasing transaction costs and complicating the lines of communication.5 Yet, increasing the number of parties in the talks on North Korean nuclear disarmament from four to six did not seem to have increased or decreased the effectiveness of the forum in moving it closer to finding a resolution. By expanding its membership from five to six with the addition of Uzbekistan, the transformation of the Shanghai Five into the SCO actually saw more measures of institutionalization being put in place. When China dealt with ASEAN in a more bilateral fashion by pushing cooperation in the 10 + 1 within the context of the 10 + 3, the number of countries involved obviously went down, but the efficacy of this sub-grouping seems to be higher than that of the larger forum. As to the future effectiveness of the 10 + 3 after it turned into the core of the East Asian Summit in December 2005 with the inclusion of India, Australia, and New Zealand, or that of the SCO, with the admission of Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan, and India as observers, it is as yet unclear. As China’s enthusiasm toward crafting, sustaining, and deepening this largely security-oriented regional multilateral institution known as the SCO has only waxed unmitigated, we may tentatively conclude that the proposition that China has a certain preference for institutionalizing economic multilateral forums but not security ones is not borne out. As to the Pacific island countries, China is certainly more confident of

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having its agenda adopted in the more intimate CPIC Forum than the PIF postsummit dialogues, where it has to share the podium with other large aid donors such as Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the USA and EU, not to mention Taiwan. There exists a minority view that multilateral institutions that start out small will tend to develop a deeper web of cooperation than those that start out with many members, if the cooperative norms of behavior are already well-established by the initial players and adhered to by the new-comers.6 Indeed, there is some support for this postulation, looking at the expansion of the 4PT into the 6PT, the Shanghai Five into the SCO, and ASEAN into the 10 + 3/10 + 1, which saw the broadening and deepening of institutionalization measures, in contrast with APEC and the ARF, which started with many more members with their divergent interests and variegated conducts. It might have been that, compared to the other regional groupings examined, it was easier for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ministry of Foreign Affairs to manage relations with, and co-ordinate efforts among, member states of the Shanghai Five/SCO and ASEAN + 3/ ASEAN + 1, particularly in their teething years, as they lie territorially wholly within the jurisdiction and purview of its Department of Eurasian–Central Asian Affairs and Department of Asian Affairs, respectively. However, the postulation cannot explain the differences in the degree of institutionalization among these forums in which China played a, if not the, leading role. Neither, it seems, can China’s apparent equal enthusiasm in promoting both regional multilateral security forums, such as the 6PT and SCO, or economic ones, such as the ASEAN + 3 and ASEAN + 1, be explained through this conjecture. Asia has to prepare for a gradual but definite retreat of American power from the region. Yet, Asian regionalism has been criticized by many observers for lacking a country that is ready and able to play a leadership role in overriding structural difficulties and resolving differences of opinion in integrating the region. China is apparently willing to bear the cost of leading the drive for greater institutionalization in Asian regional organizations because, as compared to reaping the benefits of raising its international status and securing a peaceful and stable external environment for its economic expansion, the price of leadership, such as hosting the 6PT, reducing or eliminating tariffs for agricultural imports from the poorer Southeast Asian countries, budgeting for a SCO secretariat staff, or dispensing aid to tiny Pacific island countries is quite low and, if necessary, can be kept relatively well-hidden for a large and authoritarian country. As well, the degree to which the principle of non-interference in the affairs of neighboring states is held by China means that pursuing security cooperation and functional interdependence with Beijing pose very little political risk to the other Asian states. This also implies that, for neighboring countries, external balancing against China is largely unnecessary and at most occasionally considered by state leaders and defense strategists as a hedge against sudden and adverse strategic changes in the region. China has certainly succeeded in dove-tailing its “Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence” with the “Shanghai Spirit” and the “ASEAN Way.” China has also

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tried to market its “New Security Concept” to regional states, not least by linking it to the working of the ARF, when the Chinese delegation submitted a formal position paper at the July 2002 meeting of the Forum, stating that “the line of thought of the Forum in promoting security through dialogue among equals suits the idea of the ‘New Security Concept’.”7 It is a noteworthy finding from this study that the norms embodied in these principles, spirits, ways, or concepts, although they may appear to be similarly general, nebulous, or non-binding, and do not by themselves lead to regional integration, are also not a hindrance to its structuring, as they are common values or outlooks that participating countries can jointly subscribe to in building trust, regulating interactions and pooling efforts for shared tasks, before more contentious issues are brought up for debate and negotiation. For China, promoting these norms is part of institution-building for regional integration. The adoption and diffusion of these norms, which are championed by China to the minimization or exclusion of others, are instilling in people who live within the regions, outsiders, and the Chinese themselves, the impression and belief that these regions as a whole are leaning towards, or even hitching on, the Chinese in a common destiny. This perception, if it takes hold, may be no less important, and perhaps more so, than the economic, security, and diplomatic realities that the Chinese leadership can create, to perpetuate and expand China’s own advantages, benefits, interests, and influence in the regional groupings in its neighborhood. The jury is still out as to whether China’s multilateral diplomacy is a carefully cultivated effort to advance national interests by “reassuring those who might collaborate against a putative China threat,”8 or whether it reflects a genuine conversion from instrumentalist reasoning to cooperative definitions of security socialized by the experience of participating in multilateral organizations. Interviews with Chinese official and academic elites have indicated that realism, and increasing comprehensive national power, remain the core of mainstream Chinese international relations thinking, and tendencies toward “Grotianism” or entering into complex interdependent cooperation with other state governments should be interpreted as tactical acts of diplomacy.9 China has used regional forums like the SCO and ASEAN + China to push for energy supplies or tariff reductions, after which China exercised its bargaining power as a significant market and investor by dealing with these countries individually on specific concessions to maximize its own advantage, and they were hard-pressed to renege on their pledges. Even so, as China scholar Susan Shirk has noted, realpolitik pursuit of national interest does not preclude an idealist commitment to the values of multilateralism, as was the case of the USA following the Second World War, in creating multilateral global institutions and submitting itself to their authority.10 The Chinese government may also be hedging on world powers such as the USA and Russia reactivating nineteenth-century concepts of acquiring spheres of influence and encircling opponent states. If so, by integrating itself in a set of regimes in which it has a hand in crafting, shaping and managing, and hence definite interests and influence, China can hope to thwart any such putatively unfavorable moves. Certainly, by promoting multilateral processes, China hopes to work through them to realize the structuring of a “harmonious” broad neighborhood

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zone of accommodative states and economies, to dilute or constrain the still formidable US power and influence in Asia and the Pacific. In any case, as part of its “Good Neighbor” strategy, by embracing regional multilateral initiatives and channeling its growing power into a more institutionalized setting, China is seeking to establish the country as indispensable for addressing regional issues.11 In a survey conducted in 2006 by South Korea’s East Asia Institute and the United States’ Chicago Council on Global Affairs in South Korea, the USA, China, India, Australia, and Indonesia on respondents’ opinions and attitudes toward China, sentiments revealed indicated that there is a serious bifurcation in the way the rise of China is perceived by surrounding countries, in that it is seen to be both a military threat and a provider of economic opportunities.12 Similar perceptions were obtained in a subsequent survey conducted in 2008 by the same investigators in South Korea, the USA, China, Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia, who also found China’s soft power to lag behind that of the USA.13 This means that China has yet to generate sufficient trust and good feeling in the peoples of neighboring states to allow them to feel at ease with Chinese leadership of the region. Thus, although China has been integrating Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Korean peninsula into a regional order that is increasingly based on rules and standards of behavior laid down by the PRC, and the acceptance by regional governments of Chinese leadership in the management of security has been growing, it is still too early to argue that China is constructing a Pax Sinica to provide hegemonic stability to the regions surrounding it.14 Notwithstanding that, while professing and encouraging adherence to the norms of sovereignty and noninterference, and buttressed by strong and continuous economic growth, China’s enthusiasm and effectiveness in crafting, sustaining, and deepening regional multilateral institutions has only increased, reflecting its overall more confident approaches and strategic deftness in achieving its desires in the region. Most people and governments in Asia accept the need for a structure of certainty in managing security and economic relations, and the challenge is to deepen multilateral negotiations and build institutions. However, institutionalization of the Asian regional multilateral processes, in many ways led or motivated by China over the past dozen years, faces three major limitations. First, although the idea of an Asian Currency Unit, modeled after the European Currency Unit that was a precursor to the Euro as the region’s common currency, was floated by a research office of the ADB and discussed at the ASEAN + 3 Finance Ministers’ Meeting in May 2006,15 the US dollar is still the currency of choice for most people in Asia. Second, no one in Asia is seriously contemplating any schemes for a customs union, let alone political federation on the scale of the European Union, given the vast differences in the history, culture, and political institutions of regional countries. Third, the proliferation of bilateral trading arrangements in East Asia, with its “spaghetti bowl effect with different rules and regulations,” may generate an “interlocking web of FTAs in the region,” 16 which could eventually lead to an East Asia-wide free trade area if they are negotiated among countries within the region; conversely, it may also hinder the process of regional integration. Although China is far less suspicious of multilateral arrangements than even 10 years ago, in 1999, its comfort level for participating in regional institutions,

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and hence its behavior in these organizations, still depends on its ability to maximize its relative power, interest, and autonomy within these bodies. To the extent that China is pushing for the institutionalization of regional multilateral processes, the scope of its achievement has been shown to be limited by two primary considerations – the distribution of power among the forum participants and the extent to which the major players are willing to accommodate China, which shows up China’s influence relative to the other members; and the importance of the issues that the specific forum is set up to deal with, which shows up the relevance and saliency of China’s proposals to participating countries. To overcome these constraints, the Chinese political, economic, security, and socio-cultural elite will have to create more common issue areas and thicker cooperative linkages with their counterparts in the participating countries of the regional processes, to increase the incentives of these foreign domestic constituencies to cooperate with, and reduce their threat perceptions of, the PRC.

Future trends in China’s regional and international relations Although China’s diplomatic shifts reflect improved foreign affairs circumstances and a more confident self-image, they replicate existing interests of consolidating and increasing its national wealth and power and spreading its external influence. China’s push for regional integration through confidence-building and institutionalization is a sustained attempt to increase and perpetuate its influence throughout its neighborhood and exhort other states to adopt its state-centric “New International Order” model of conducting foreign relations. Constructing rational-legal frameworks of authority to regulate political, economic, and security relations among Asian countries, and raising the standards of rules and regulations to those of international laws, would provide a structured, balanced, and stable set of regional relationships.17 So doing would be to China’s interest, provided it could control the processes of their integration and institutionalization. China’s involvement in crafting and institutionalizing regional arrangements in Central Asia/Eurasia, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific will be of the highest foreign policy priority, together with and related to the acquisition of mineral and fuel resources. “Tao Guang Yang Hui, You Suo Zuo Wei” as a foreign policy strategy is likely to be maintained at least until the eighteenth Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress in late 2012, if not until the nineteenth CCP Congress in late 2017. If China’s national strength continues to rise in comparison to that of the USA, Japan, and the EU, one should definitely not expect China to refrain from minding others’ business or getting more things accomplished, such as deploying military forces abroad, and might even wish for the bygone era in which China tried its utmost not to be perceived as interfering in the internal politics of other states. China’s non-traditional security cooperation with surrounding countries on combating terrorism, piracy and smugglers of all types may be greatly expanded as both a function and harbinger of its rising influence outside the economic sphere. Were it not for quiet Russian opposition to what it considers to be outside intrusion into its traditional sphere of influence, China would have stationed troops

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in Kyrgyzstan in answer to its government’s request to help counter terrorist actions in that country.18 China may in time expect neighboring countries to conduct their foreign policies in manners that implicitly recognize China’s central position in Asian diplomatic discourses, despite their understandable wariness, in anticipating foreign leaders to ask frequently to visit Beijing and to invite PRC leaders to visit their countries, utter phrases that are appropriate to the ears of Chinese officials, protect Chinese investments in their countries, and not to adopt strategic positions that could be interpreted as threatening to China or foreign policy positions that could be seen as being disrespectful to its national interests or dignity. Although China’s style of diplomatic conduct has changed, the sustenance of regime interest and legitimacy will be of continued paramount importance to the CCP, with foreign policy direction or conduct as a tool to those ends. Changes in identity and behavior reflect changes in the undergirding material vectors, such as increasing comprehensive national power, and confidence of the Chinese leadership in influencing or manipulating the direction of China’s foreign security and economic policies. If there is a change in the regime, or if the present regime truly opens up and pursues political plurality, then tension with the USA, Japan, and India, as fellow democracies accepting US political values and world leadership, will be substantively reduced. However, that does not mean that China’s leadership will have less drive or motivation to push for its own national interests and influence in nurturing the development or guiding the evolution of regional organizations or arrangements with neighboring states. From the perspective of international society and surrounding countries, the rise or development of China is a reality to be faced, and there is no option to dealing with China except through deeper engagement. China was the first major economy to emerge from the world recession of mid-2008–2009. Even at the rate of 7 percent growth in Gross Domestic Product starting 2009, by any measure, China would be the second largest economy by 2013 at the latest. China is building a new generation of large destroyers to be equipped with advanced weapons systems from stealth and sensor technology to anti-submarine capabilities, and probably an aircraft carrier as well.19 Development aspects such as these will impact on how neighbors approach territorial disputes with China. In the communiqué released at the end of then Indian Prime Minister Atel Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to China in June 2003, India for the first time recognized Tibet as a part of China. All outstanding boundary issues between Russia and China were settled during the visit of then Russian President Vladimir Putin to China in October 2004. To avoid internationalizing the South China Sea disputes, China will continue to insist on “bilateral consultations” with affected Southeast Asian countries within the rubric of the ASEAN + China forum, all the while that it is completing a submarine base at the port of Yulin on Hainan Island. Despite a noisy demonstration at its embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam, in December 2007, China did not back down from setting-up a county-level Sansha administrative unit of Hainan province, which would cover all the isles under dispute in the South China Sea. In future negotiations over the settlement and delineation of the East China Sea boundary, Japan may have to concede more to a greatly strengthened China than it would like.

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China's relations with Russia will be crucial for years to come. Russia has become the world’s largest crude oil producer, so aside from having Kazakhstan’s oil and gas going through its own set of pipelines to China, which is insufficient for China’s demand for the foreseeable future, the Chinese are trying to entice the Russians into linking their set of pipelines to the Kazakh-Chinese ones, to orientate any increases in Russian oil and gas towards China rather than Europe.20 The Chinese also want to keep Central Asia as a Sino-Russian condominium through the SCO, to prevent either security or economic penetration of the region by the USA or the West, or its wholesale reintegration into Russia through the Collective Security Treaty Organization. China also considers the Sino-Russian Strategic Partnership, which undergirds the SCO, as being crucial for adopting a common position in the 6PT. Hence, although China has always been against encouraging separatism, it neither supported nor condemned Russia’s August 2008 military intervention in Georgia and subsequent recognition of Georgia’s autonomous regions of South Ossetia and Abhazia as independent states in the SCO Summit Declaration of August 30, 2008, which was also the stance of the other SCO member states; instead only calling for the cessation of force and the peaceful resolution of the conflict. China’s preferred vision of the US role in world affairs would be that of primus inter pares, in maintaining the international system with China and other major powers for the maximization of China’s continued benefit, but not forcing America’s own ideological or policy preferences on other countries. As China is not yet in a position to replace US hegemony, seeking to rewrite the rules by which the present international system operates may well lead to disturbances that would disrupt trade, investment, and economic development on which the popularity and legitimacy of CCP rule is based, and this would not be in the interest of the Chinese leadership, at least as yet. The Chinese leadership will instead look for opportunities to push for co-management of world economic, financial, security, and diplomatic affairs in concert with major powers to preserve the diversity and stability of the international system and augment its own roles and influence within it. China wants Americans to know that their country can no longer play the role of a hyper-power, which cavalierly disregards the interests of China in making its own moves. Being a co-manager of international affairs, whether as part of a USA–China G-2 or G-20 summit of major economies, resonates with how the Chinese sees their country as a “responsible great power.” China will stand firm on North Korea to completely dismantle its nuclear weapons-making facilities, to remove a strong pretext by the USA and Japan to perfect and deploy a Theater Missile Defense system in the Western Pacific. However, Beijing also wants Pyongyang to dispose of its existing nuclear arsenal, and would oppose US normalization of relations with North Korea merely on the basis of a promise not to allow for the proliferation of nuclear weapons, material, or technology. If this US diplomatic intent toward North Korea is more than just rumor, then there is room for China and Japan to work together to undermine such a prospective deal that would leave intact Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons, with their potential to destabilize the Northeast Asian region. China is not likely to oppose a unification of the Korean peninsula on South Korea’s terms, given

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that Koreans are a nationalistic people who could then be expected to terminate the South Korea–US alliance and ask American troops to leave Korea, and that protests against the then “unnecessary” US military presence in Okinawa could be expected to get more frequent and violent. Unless the Chinese leadership feels gravely and directly threatened by a prospective and overt containment policy put in place by the USA and its allies, it is very unlikely to change its present strategy regarding the North Korean nuclear issue, but China still has a North Korean card that it could play. China is definitely emerging as an alternative economic pole, and increasingly a security one as well, for the countries of Southeast Asia. ASEAN has thus far felt little need to address human rights criticisms by North American and European countries leveled against Myanmar because the grouping knows that it can always turn to China as an alternative economic partner and to meet its economic needs. China is investing heavily in the poorer Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam that abuts its southeastern borders, because it suits Chinese economic and geopolitical interests to draw these states into China’s economic orbit.21 China’s active search for resources and influence world-wide, especially in countries that do not respect American or Western political norms, will put pressure on traditional economic partners and aid donors to de-emphasize “good governance,” or democratic accountability, respect for human rights, and eradication of corruption, as conditions for engaging in trade or providing assistance, unless they can win China over to their views on giving up or watering down its principle of non-interference. Given the stakes involved for China, this would not be easy. By 2008, China’s investments in overseas mergers and acquisitions had exceeded US$45 billion, more than half of this amount in companies around the world that can provide China with natural resources.22 Given the increasing saliency of acquiring food supplies, raw materials, and energy resources for China’s authorities to drive the country’s swift industrialization and mass consumption, Beijing has been involved in constructing a China-centered web of multilateral relations, ostensibly within a bilateral framework, of economic arrangements with Africa and the Arab World. This has been done by talking trade, dispensing aid, and planning quadrennial summit diplomacies with countries located in natural geographic regions far from China’s immediate neighborhood, with associations bearing names such as the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and China-Arab Forum. The proto-type of this kind of one (China) to many (states) associations (like the African Union and the Arab League) that are bilateral in form but really multilateral in substance, whereby China would deal separately on issues and payoffs with the individual countries concerned within the rubric of the forum, is of course the ASEAN + China regional arrangement. Chinese state firms have also been increasing their purchasing orders from Latin American countries, particularly in metallic and hydrocarbon resources, so a “Forum on China–Latin America Cooperation” or “China-Latin America Forum” may be in the offing. Indeed, the prominent purpose for China in operationalizing its melodious “Harmonious World” watchword is to make its foreign economic policies and government-linked corporations more welcoming to small and middle sized

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third world countries, particularly those with rich natural and primary resources, by suggesting that the economic interests and sovereigntist non-interference principles of all parties would be taken into account. The Chinese leadership understands the need for reforming the United Nations, particularly its Security Council, to account for the changing clout of member states, but does not wish to see another powerful Asian country like Japan championing the interests of the region, particularly security ones. However, a nonveto-wielding permanent Security Council membership for Japan may be acceptable to the Chinese. Recognizing Japan as a normal major power with a legitimate role on the world stage and Asia-Pacific arena may enable the Chinese to put some distance between the diplomatic and security postures of the USA and Japan, especially with the new Hatoyama Yukio government of the erstwhile opposition Democratic Party of Japan that assumed office in September 2009. China has been pushing for tighter economic and political links with Japan and South Korea, to the extent of forming a threesome caucus for dialogue within ASEAN + 3 since 1999. Sino-Japanese-South Korean cooperation appears to have made the USA unwilling to incur political costs in opposing the Chiang Mai Initiative, as it was US objection that killed the Asian Monetary Fund proposal. In the longer term, China may consider promoting a common East Asian cultural identity with not only Japan and Korea, but also perhaps including Southeast Asia, to firmly locate the telos of Chinese and East Asian cooperation in the rooting of China in East Asia.23 In a survey conducted in June 2008 by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 77 percent of Chinese, 62 percent of South Korean and 54 percent of Japanese respondents already claimed to possess an East Asian identity.24 This is the product of the integration process that took place over the previous dozen years in East Asia, in which China played a leading role. The call by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on his visit to India in August 2007, to create a “Greater Asia” partnership of democracies by Japan, India, Australia, and the USA,25 was widely seen by the Chinese as a sign that Japan is seeking help on adopting a posture of prospective containment of China’s rising influence on the Korean peninsula, Central Asia, Siberia, Mongolia, India, and Southeast Asia. Indeed, 80 percent of Japan’s oil imports come through the Straits of Malacca and South China Sea,26 which makes Japanese concerns that Southeast Asia should not be dominated by a potentially threatening power understandable. The Chinese feel that such a “Four States Alliance” is very unlikely to succeed. In September 2009, Japan’s newly elected Prime Minister Hatoyama committed his government to promoting the idea of an East Asian Community modeled on the EU with a common currency, and China said that this was also its goal.27 Furthermore, Hatoyama acted on his election promise to end logistical support for US military forces in Afghanistan. As to India, it enters into a regular trilateral dialogue with China and Russia and has as much as possible always adopted a non-aligned foreign policy posture. Whereas Japan’s trade with India stood at a minuscule US$6.5 billion, Sino-India trade was already US$24.9 billion in 2006.28 Also, because the targeting of shipping containers by terrorist groups on the high seas could seriously affect oil supplies

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from the Persian Gulf, jeopardizing energy security for India, Japan, and China, India’s location in the Indian Ocean between the Strait of Hormuz and Strait of Malacca makes it an important strategic partner to court by both Japan and China. As India prepares for future increases in its oil and gas consumption, it may become a keen competitor of not only China, but also Japan, for hydrocarbon resources and influence in the major oil and gas exporting countries. As to Australia, it has been reticent about policies that could anger China, as its strong economic growth in recent years has been to a large extent based on exports of raw material to China. Both Australia’s governing party and its official parliamentary opposition have come out against any type of balancing against China.29 Furthermore, China is currently the number one trading partner for both Japan and Australia. The USA will be the natural leader of such a “Four States Alliance” should it come about. However, it is not in America’s interest to be seen to be ganging up with Japan, India, or Australia on China, unless its relations with China were to rupture completely. The only conceivable conflict flashpoint for the foreseeable future between the USA and China is over Taiwan, but although the USA will continue to sell arms to Taiwan, both these countries have an incentive to maintain peace in the Taiwan Straits. They have been assuaged by the overwhelming victory in the January 2008 Taiwanese legislative election of the Kuomintang, whose leader, Ma Ying-jeou, on becoming Taiwan’s president in May 2008, has favored closer economic relations and people-to-people ties with China, and stressed the party’s platform of “no unification (with China), no (declaration of) independence, no (cause for) war.” Following the forcing down by Chinese warplanes of a US spy plane over Hainan in April 2001, former US President G. W. Bush stated that he would do “whatever it takes” to protect Taiwan’s separateness from mainland China. However, since 9-11, China’s support for America’s fight against the threat of terrorism, albeit mostly limited to rhetoric and moral backing, has increased America’s trust in China and diverted attention away from the potential challenges presented by a rising China. Meanwhile, the US military’s involvement in Central Asia and its much touted “return to Southeast Asia” in assisting the Filipino and Thai military in fighting their armed Muslim separatists have proven to be of limited duration and effectiveness. It might take the current US administration of President Barack Obama up to three years on taking office at the start of 2009 to settle the pressing issues of American troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the voluminous troubles of second mortgages in the US housing market, and the failure of banks and large companies that led to the world-wide recession beginning in mid-2008. Nonetheless, the Chinese leadership is concerned that US policy-makers might perceive China as having grown so influential and strong-minded in international affairs that they might soon after want to put together a strategic and economic posture of containment or “constrainment” against China among regional states and within international organizations. Hence, Chinese leaders will feel the need all the more to engage surrounding countries and institutionalize regional organizations in Asia and the Pacific over the many aspects of its “Good Neighbor Policy.”

Notes

1 Introduction 1 Susan L. Shirk, “China’s Multilateral Diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific.” Paper presentation, “China as an Emerging Regional and Technology Power: Implications for U.S. Economic and Security Interests, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission,” February 12-13, 2004, www.uscc.gov/hearings/2004hearings/written_ testimonies/04_02_12wrts/shirk.htm (accessed on September 1, 2008). 2 Jane Perlez, “China Shoring Up Image as Asian Superpower,” International Herald Tribune, December 2, 2004; Evan Medeiros and R. Taylor Fravel, “China’s New Diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs 82, no. 6 (November/December 2003): 22–35; and David C. Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong; The Need for New Analytical Frameworks,” International Security 27, no. 4 (Spring 2003): 57–85. 3 See G. W. Downs, D. M. Rocke and P. N. Barsoom, “Managing the Evolution of Multilateralism,” International Organization 52, no. 2, (1998): 397–419; Kim Taeho, “The Six-Way Multilateral Approach: Dilemma for Every Party,” Korea and World Affairs 27, no. 3, (2003): 342–355; and Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Society (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968). 4 This point was made by Alastair Iain Johnston in his chapter on “Socialization in International Institutions: The ASEAN Way and International Relations Theory,” in International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific, ed. G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 107–162. Johnston was describing China’s willingness to be “socialized” into certain norms adopted by member-states of the ARF, but the parallel is close enough to be applied here. 5 Kuik Cheng-Chwee, “Multilateralism in China’s ASEAN Policy: Its Evolution, Characteristics, and Aspiration,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 27, no. 1 (2005): 119. 6 Wang Jianwei, “China’s Multilateral Diplomacy in the New Millennium,” in China Rising: Power and Motivation in Chinese Foreign Policy, ed. Yong Deng and Fei-ling Wang (Lanham Ma: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 188. 7 C. Fred Bergsten, “The New Asian Challenge,” (working paper no. 4, Peterson Institute of International Economics, Washington DC, 2000). 8 David Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia,” International Security 29, no. 3 (Winter 2004/05): 68–69. 9 Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia,” 73. 10 Ibid. 11 Susan L. Shirk, “China’s Multilateral Diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific,” www.uscc.gov/ hearings/2004hearings/written_testimonies/04_02_12wrts/shirk.htm 12 Mike M. Mochizuki, “China – Japan Relations,” in Power Shift, ed. David Shambaugh (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 140–141.

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13 Ming Wan, Sino-Japanese Relations: Interaction, Logic and Transformation (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press & Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 129–130; and Susan L. Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 166–167. 14 Wan, Sino-Japanese Relations: Interaction, Logic and Transformation, 130; and Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower, 168. 15 Jiang Zemin, “Report of the 14th Chinese Communist Party National Congress,” Beijing Review, October 6–12, 1997, 29–30. 16 Wang Yizhou, “Zhongguo yu guoji zuzhi guanxi yanjiu and ruogan wenti,” (“Several issues concerning the study of China’s involvement with international organizations,”) Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Relations), no. 11 (August 2002): 51, 54. 17 In this article, the terms ASEAN + 3 and 10 + 3 are used interchangeably, as are the terms ASEAN + China, ASEAN + 1, and 10 + 1, as all these terms are invariably used in the scholarly literature to refer to these processes. 18 Fu Ying, “China and ASEAN in a New Era,” China: An International Journal 1, no. 2 (2003): 304–312. 19 See Elizabeth Bomberg, Laura Cram, and David Martin, “The EU’s Institutions,” in The European Union: How Does It Work, ed. Elizabeth Bomberg and Alexander Stubb (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 43–68.; and Michael E. Smith, Europe’s Foreign and Security Policy: The Institutionalization of Cooperation (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 20 See Amitav Acharya, “Regional Institutions and Asian Security Order: Norms, Power, and Prospect for Peaceful Change,” in Asian Security Order: Instrumental and Normative Features, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 210–240. 21 See Melissa G. Curley and Nicholas Thomas, eds, Advancing East Asian Regionalism (London and New York: Routledge, 2007); Heribert Dieter, ed., The Evolution of Regionalism in Asia (London and New York: Routledge, 2007); Naoko Munakata, Transforming East Asia – The Evolution of Regional Economic Integration (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2006); Christopher M. Dent, China, Japan and Regional Leadership in East Asia (Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2008). 22 See C. P. Chung, “Chinese Approaches to Institutionalizing Regional Multilateralism. Journal of Contemporary China 17, no.57 (2008): 747–764; “The Role of AsianPacific Organizations in Maintaining Regional Security,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 20, no. 2 (2008): 169–185; “Designing Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation,” (working paper no. 189, Hong Kong: Centre for Asian Pacific Studies, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, N.T. Hong Kong, 2007); “China and the Institutionalization of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” Problems of Post-Communism 53, no. 5 (2006): 3–14; “Southeast Asia – China Relations: Dialectics of ‘Hedging’ and ‘Counter-Hedging’.” in Southeast Asian Affairs 2004, ed. Chin Kin Wah and Daljit Singh (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Publications Unit, 2004): 287–318. 23 John Gerard Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalization (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 56. 24 Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 79–95. 25 Elizabeth Bomberg, Laura Cram, and David Martin, “The EU’s Institutions,” 43–68. 26 Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Society (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1968), 12–20. 27 See Michael E. Smith, Europe’s Foreign and Security Policy: The Institutionalization of Cooperation (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 28 See Avery Goldstein, “An Emerging China’s Emerging Grand Strategy, A Neo-Bismarkian Turn,” in International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific, ed.

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G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2003), 107–162. 29 See Susan L. Shirk, “China’s Multilateral Diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific,” www.uscc. gov/hearings/2004hearings/written_testimonies/04_02_12wrts/shirk.htm 2 China’s “Good Neighbor Policy” 1 Mao Zedong wenxuan (Selected Works of Mao Zedong) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [1964]), 1362. 2 Zhu Tingchang, “Lun Zhongguo mulin zhengce de lilun yu shijian,” (“On the theory and practice of China’s Good Neighbor Policy,”) Guoji Zhengzhi Yanjiu (Studies of International Politics), no. 2 (2001): 45. 3 Mao Zedong wenxuan, 1089. 4 Wang Fuchun, “Shiliuda yu 21 shijichu de Zhongguo waijiao zhanlue,” (“The Sixteen Party Congress and China’s Foreign Policy Strategy in the early 21st century,”) Guoji Zhengzhi Yanjiu (Studies of International Politics), no. 1 (2003): 64. 5 “George Bush Sr. New World Order Speech,” www.flixya.com/video/547984/ George_Bush_Sr._New_World_Order_Speech (accessed on October 1, 2009). 6 Pan Guohua and Wang Yongli, “Dui lengzhanhou Zhongguo waijiao xinzhanlue de shikao,” (“Thoughts on China’s post-cold war new foreign policy strategy,”) Guoji Zhengzhi Yanjiu (Studies of International Politics), no. 1 (2001): 6. 7 Bonnie S. Glaser, “Ensuring the ‘Go Abroad’ Policy Serves China’s Domestic Priorities,” Association for Asia Research, www.asianresearch.org/articles/3010.html (accessed on January 16, 2008). 8 Zhang Xizheng, “Zhongguo tong Dongmeng de mulin huxin huoban guanxi,” (“The Good Neighborly, Mutual Trusting and Partnership Relations between China and ASEAN,”) Dangdai Yazhou (Contemporary Asia), no. 2 (1999): 28. 9 Xiong Kunxin, “Cong Zhongguo chuantong wenhua de shijue kan Zhongguo yu zhoubian guojia de mulin youhao zhengce,” (“Looking at China’s Good Neighbor Policy with surrounding countries from the perspective of China’s traditional culture,”) Guoji Zhengzhi Yanjiu (Studies of International Politics), no. 2 (2004):18. 10 Wang Fuchun, “Shiliuda yu 21 shijichu de Zhongguo waijiao zhanlue,” 64. 11 Liang Shoude, “Heping yu fazhan zhuti shidai de xinjieduan yu Zhongguo duiwai gongzuo de xinshilu, (“A new phase for the period of peace and development and new thoughts for China’s external work,”) Guoji Zhengzhi Yanjiu (Studies of International Politics), no. 1 (2003): 17. 12 Shen Changyou, “Zhongguo jianli guoji xinzhixu de zhuzhang yu waijiao gongzuo,” (“China’s suggestions for the construction of a new international order and foreign affairs work,” Guoji Zhengzhi Yanjiu (Studies of International Politics), no. 3 (1992): 64. 13 Xing Yue and Zhan Yijia, “New Identity, New Interests and New Diplomacy,” Contemporary International Relations 16, no. 12 (December 2006): 29. 14 Cao Yunhua and Xu Shanbao, “Mulin waijiao zhence yu Zhongguo – Dongmeng guanxi,” (“Good Neighborly Foreign Policy and China – ASEAN Relations,”) Waijiao Guanxi (Foreign Relations), no. 6 (2004): 27. 15 Zhang Xizheng, “Zhongguo tong Dongmeng de mulin huxin huoban guanxi,” 26. 16 Wang Yi, “Yulinweishan Yilinweiban,” (“Neighbors as friends and partners,”) Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Affairs), no. 5 (2003): 9. 17 Wang Yi, “Yulinweishan Yilinweiban,” 16. 18 Bai Ruchun, “Riben dui Dongmeng zhengce yu Zhong-Ri guanxi,” (“Japan’s policy towards ASEAN and China-Japan relations,” Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Affairs), no. 3 (2007): 56. 19 Guo Jiping, “Haolinju, haopenyou, haohuoban – Zhongguo zhoubian waijiao de shijian yu chengguo,” (“Good neighborly, good friends, good partners – the realization

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23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

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and fruits of China’s peripheral foreign policy,”) Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Affairs), no. 2 (2007): 15. Zhan Shiliang, “Yatai diqu xingshi he Zhongguo mulin youhao zhengce,” (“AsiaPacific regional circumstances and China’s good and friendly neighbor policy,”) Guoji Zhengzhi Yanjiu (Studies of International Politics), no. 4 (1993): 3. Xinhua, “China-ASEAN free trade area to be completed on schedule,” China Daily, www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-08/07/content_8541098.htm (accessed on September 18, 2009). Cui Haining, “Zhongguo guojia liyi ji qizai Zhongguo-Dongmeng guanxi zhong mianlin de jiyu yu tiaozhan,” (“Chinese national interests and opportunities and challenges facing China-ASEAN relations,”) Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Affairs), no. 10 (2007): 51. “Rights reminder as Japan offers aid to Mekong nations,” South China Morning Post, January 17, 2008, p.7. Cui Haining, “Zhongguo guojia liyi ji qizai Zhongguo-Dongmeng guanxi zhong mianlin de jiyu yu tiaozhan,” 51. Chang Qing, “Yulinweishan Yilinweiban pingdenghuli gongtongfazhan,” (“Neighbors as friends and partners, doe equal benefits and common development,”) Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Affairs), no. 5 (2003):18. “Declaration on Establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” The Shanghai Cooperation Organization Website, www.sectsco.org/html/00088.html (accessed on November 25, 2008). The Shanghai Five became the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2001 when Uzbekistan joined the grouping formed by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Shinichi Ogawa, ed., The National Institute for Defense Studies, Japan, East Asian Strategic Review 2008 (Tokyo: The Japan Times, 2008), 87–88. Harushiko Kuroda, “Challenges for the Asian Economy in 2008 and Beyond,” (speech, ADB Institute Symposium, February 8, 2008). www.adbi.org/speeches/2008/02/08/2474. speech.kuroda.cae.2008.symposium/ (accessed on February 25, 2009). Smith, Europe’s Foreign and Security Policy, 46. Ibid. John Gerard Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity: Essays on international institutionalization (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 56. Michael E. Smith, Europe’s Foreign and Security Policy, 40. Zheng Xianwu, “’Xinquyuzhuyi’” de hexin tezheng,” (“The Core Characteristics of ‘New regionalism’,” Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Affairs) 12, (2007): 24. Fu Ying, “China and ASEAN in a New Era,” 310–311. Fu, “China and ASEAN in a New Era,” 311. Kuik, “Multilateralism in China’s ASEAN Policy: Its Evolution, Characteristics, and Aspiration,” 104.

3 China’s approaches to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation 1 The 12 founding members that formed APEC on November, 6-7, 1989 were Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and the USA. Economies that subsequently joined the forum were the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong and Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) on November, 12-14, 1991, Mexico and Papua New Guinea on November, 17-19, 1993, Chile on November, 11-12, 1994, and Peru, Russia, and Vietnam on November, 14-15, 1998. 2 Takashi Terada, “Japan and the evolution of Asian regionalism,” in Evolution of Regionalism in Asia, ed. Heribert Dieter (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 61–62.

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3 Joseph A. Camilleri, Regionalism in the New Asia-Pacific Order: The Political Economy of the Asia-Pacific Region, Volume II (Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2003), 161. 4 Ibid. 5 Jianren Lu, “Dongmeng guojia de APEC zhengce,” (“ASEAN Countries’ APEC Policies,”) in Yatai Jinghe Zuzhi yu Zhongguo (APEC and China), ed. Jianren Lu (Beijing: Jingji Guanli Chubanshe, 1997), 103. 6 Camilleri, Regionalism in the New Asia-Pacific Order, 144; Wei Liu, “Meiguo de APEC Zhengce,” (“America’s APEC Policy,”) in Yatai Jinghe Zuzhi yu Zhongguo (APEC and China), ed. Jianren Lu (Beijing: Jingji Guanli Chubanshe, 1997), 81. 7 Mark Beeson and Kanishka Jayasuriya, “The political rationalities of regionalism: APEC and the EU in comparative perspective,” Pacific Review 11, no. 3 (1998): 316. 8 Yunxiang Liang and Wang Xiuli, “Zhongguo de APEC zhengce jiqi dui dongya guoji guanxi de yingxiang,” (“China’s APEC policy and its influence on East Asian international relations,”) Zhongguo Zhengzhi Yanjiu (Chinese Political Studies), no. 3 (2000): 57; and Jiru Shen, “Zhongguo yu APEC de huxiang shiying ji APEC de weilai,” (“Mutual accommodation between China and APEC and the future of APEC,”) in Construction in Contradiction: a multiple insight into relationship between China and Key International Organizations, ed. Yizhou Wang (Beijing: Zhongguo fanzhan chubanshe, 2003), 137. 9 Liu, “Meiguo de APEC Zhengce,” 83; and Shen, “Zhongguo yu APEC de huxiang shiying ji APEC de weilai,” 141. 10 Camilleri, Regionalism in the New Asia-Pacific Order, 147–148. 11 J. Richard Walsh, “A Pillar of the Community: The Role of APEC in US Policy,” Journal of East Asian Affairs 7, no. 2 (1993): 551, 554. 12 Charles E. Morrison, “APEC in Sino-American Relations: A Vehicle for System Integration,” in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC): The First Decade, ed. Jurgen Ruland, Eva Manske and Werner Draguhn (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), 127–128. 13 Stewart Goodings, “The APEC Secretariat: A Management Perspective,” in APEC as an Institution: Multilateral Governance in the Asia-Pacific, ed. Richard E. Feinberg (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003), 68. 14 APEC website, www.apec.org/content/apec/apec_groups/committees/economic_ committee.html (accessed on July 31, 2008). This and subsequent internet references beginning with www.apec.org/content/apec/ or www.apec.org/apec/ refer to the official website of APEC. 15 William Jr. Bodde, View from the 19th Floor: Reflections of the first APEC Executive Director (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1994), 67. 16 Terada, “Japan and the evolution of Asian regionalism,” 62–63. 17 Naoko Munakata, Transforming East Asia (Tokyo: Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, and Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2006), 74. 18 Min Shi, “Yatai Jinghe Zuzhi dansheng de lishi Beijing,” (“The historical background of the birth of APEC,”) in Yatai Jinghe Zuzhi yu Zhongguo (APEC and China), ed. Jianren, Lu (Beijing: Jingji Guanli Chubanshe,11; and Lu, “Dongmeng guojia de APEC zhengce,” 104–105. 19 John Ravenhill, APEC and the Construction of Pacific Rim Regionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 106–108. 20 Shen, “Zhongguo yu APEC de huxiang shiying ji APEC de weilai,” 144. 21 Thomas G. Moore and Dixie Yang, “China, APEC and Economic Regionalism in the Asia Pacific,” Journal of East Asian Affairs 13, no. 1 (1999): 392. 22 See Amitav Acharya, “The Evolution of ASEAN Norms and the Emergence of the ASEAN Way,” in Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order, ed. Amitav Acharya (London: Routledge, 2000), 47–79.

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23 APEC defined a developing country as a member economy with an annual per capital income of less than US$1000 in 1994. Moore and Yang, “China, APEC and Economic Regionalism in the Asia Pacific,” 396. 24 Shen, “Zhongguo yu APEC de huxiang shiying ji APEC de weilai,” 143. 25 Richard E. Feinberg, “Regional Trade and Security Arrangements in the Asia Pacific and the Western Hemisphere in Comparative Perspective,” in Twenty-First Century World Order and the Asia Pacific: Value Change, Exigencies, and Power Realignment, ed. James C. Hsiung (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 195. 26 Mingjun Wei, “Yatai Jinghe Zuzhi fazhan lichengzhong de rougan wenti he woguo zhanlue yu zhengce sikao,” (“Several problems on APEC’s development path and thoughts on our national strategy and policy,”) Zhongguo Zhengzhi Yanjiu (Chinese Political Studies), no. 4 (1996): 54. 27 Ibid. 28 Jianren Lu and Zhang Yunling, “Yatai Jinghe Zuzhi fazhan zhong de jige guanxi ji qianjing,” (“Several relationships and the future of APEC’s development,”) Dangdai Yatai (Contemporary Asia-Pacific), no. 5 (1996): 8. 29 Camilleri, Regionalism in the New Asia-Pacific Order, 143. 30 Jianglin Zhao, “Riben de APEC Zhengce,” (“Japan’s APEC Policy,”) in Yatai Jinghe Zuzhi yu Zhongguo (APEC and China), ed. Jianren, Lu (Beijing: Jingji Guanli Chubanshe 1997), 95. 31 Shen, “Zhongguo yu APEC de huxiang shiying ji APEC de weilai,” 145. 32 Jianren Lu, “APEC: Shanghai huiyi de chengguo ji jinhou fazhan sikao,” (“APEC: The fruits of the Shanghai meeting and thoughts on its future development,”) Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Affairs), no. 5 (2002): 50. 33 Moore and Yang, “China, APEC and Economic Regionalism in the Asia Pacific,” 388. 34 Feinberg, “Regional Trade and Security Arrangements in the Asia Pacific and the Western Hemisphere in Comparative Perspective,” 202. 35 APEC website, www.apec.org/content/apec/about_apec/how_apec_operates/action_ plans_.html (accessed on July 31, 2008). 36 Feinberg, “Regional Trade and Security Arrangements in the Asia Pacific and the Western Hemisphere in Comparative Perspective,” p. 202. 37 Wei Zhong, “APEC tongxing shencha ji woguo de celue,” (“APEC Peer Review and our national policy,”) Dangdai Yatai (Contemporary Asia-Pacific), no. 5 (2003): 56. 38 Joseph M. Damond, “The APEC Decision-Making Process for Trade Policy Issues: The Experience and Lessons of 1994 – 2001,” in APEC as an Institution: Multilateral Governance in the Asia-Pacific, ed. Richard E. Feinberg (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003), 96; and Christopher M. Dent, “The Asia-Pacific’s New Economic Bilateralism and Regional Political Economy,” in Asia-Pacific Economic and Security Cooperation, ed. Christopher M. Dent (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), 78. 39 Jianming Zhou, “Cong APEC de dutexing kan tade fanzhan qianjing,” (“Looking at APEC’s future development from its special features,”) Guoji Zhengzhi (International Politics), no. 11 (2001): 70. 40 Mark T. Berger, “Battering Down the Chinese Walls: The Antinomies of AngloAmerican Liberalism and the History of East Asian Capitalism in the Shadow of the Cold War,” in Local Cultures and the “New Asia,” ed. C.J.W.-L. Wee (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002), 91. 41 Moore and Yang, “China, APEC and Economic Regionalism in the Asia Pacific,” 400–402. 42 Ravenhill, 99–103. 43 Jianjun Zhang, “The Functions of APEC and Implications for China: A Critical Review,” in APEC and Liberalisation of the Chinese Economy, ed. Peter Drysdale, Zhang Yunling, and Ligang Song (Canberra: Asia Pacific Press at the Australian National University, 2000), 32.

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44 Jianren Lu, The Five Big Challenges to APEC in Coming Years, November 10, 2004, www.iaps.cass.cn/english/Articles/showcontent.asp?id=692 (accessed on February 27, 2007). 45 Shen, “Zhongguo yu APEC de huxiang shiying ji APEC de weilai (Mutual accommodation between China and APEC and the future of APEC),” 150–151. 46 Jianglin Zhao, “Shiji shenghui chengguo fengshuo – ping 2001 nian APEC Shanghai huiyi (Century’s feast, bountiful harvest – evaluating year 2001 APEC Shanghai meeting),” Dangdai Yatai (Contemporary Asia-Pacific), no. 12 (2001): 9. 47 Vinod K. Aggarwal, and Elaine Kwei, “Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC): Transregionalism with a new cause?” in Interregionalism and International Relations, ed. Heiner Hanggi, Ralf Roloff and Jurgen Ruland (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 78. 48 CNN website, www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/08/apec.ap/index.html?iref= newssearch (accessed on July 31, 2008). 49 Estimated figure by APIAN (APEC International Assessment Network), Remaking APEC as an Institution: The Third APIAN Policy Report (Singapore: Singapore APEC Study Center for APIAN, 2002). 50 Richard E. Feinberg, “Voluntary multilateralism and institutional modification: The first two decades of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC),” Review of International Organizations, no. 3 (2008): 253. 51 Richard E. Feinberg and Joyce Lawrence, “Improving APEC’s Coherence – Preliminary Conference for APEC 2007 ‘Reshaping APEC for the Asian Pacific Century – Priorities and Strategies’” (paper presentation, Melbourne, Australia, December, 11–12, 2006), 2–3. 52 Richard E. Feinberg, “Project Selection and Evaluation: APEC’s Budget and Management Committee and the Secretariat,” in APEC as an Institution: Multilateral Governance in the Asia-Pacific, ed. Richard E. Feinberg (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003), 74, 77. 53 APEC Secretariat, www.apec.org/content/apec/apec_groups/committees/economic_ on_trade.html (accessed on July 31, 2008). 54 Damond, “The APEC Decision-Making Process for Trade Policy Issues,” 102. 55 Morrison, “APEC in Sino-American Relations,” 131. 56 Malaysian Sun, September 9, 2007, A1. 57 Dent, “The Asia-Pacific’s New Economic Bilateralism and Regional Political Economy,” 80. 58 Andrew MacIntyre and Barry Naughton, “The Decline of a Japan-Led Model of the East Asian Economy,” in Remapping East Asia: The Construction of a Region, ed. T. J. Pempel (Ithaca, NY and London, UK: Cornell University Press, 2005), 85–86. 59 Aggarwal and Kwei, “Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC),” 83. 60 Michael Ewing Chow, “ASEAN-China F.T.A.: Trade or Tribute?” The Singapore Yearbook of International Law 10 (2006): 261. 61 Dent, “The Asia-Pacific’s New Economic Bilateralism and Regional Political Economy,” 79. 62 APEC, “Joint Ministerial Statement,” (communiqué, 13th Meeting of APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade, Cairns, Australia, July, 5-6, 2007). 63 C. Morrison and Pedrosa E., An APEC Trade Agenda? The Political Economic of a Free Trade Area for the Asia Pacific (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007). 4 China’s approaches to the ASEAN Regional Forum 1 Michael Yahuda, “Chinese dilemmas in thinking about regional security architecture,” Pacific Review 16, no. 2 (2003): 192. 2 UN Documents Cooperation Circles, United Nations Charter, Chapter 8: Regional Arrangements, www.un-documents.net/ch-08.htm (accessed on February 18, 2009)

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3 Brian L. Job, “‘Alliances’ and Regional Security Developments: The Role of Regional Arrangements in the UN’s Promotion of Peace and Security,” www.unu.edu/ millennium/job.pdf (accessed on October 1, 2009) 4 Takeshi Yuzawa, “Japan’s changing conception of the ASEAN Regional Forum: from an optimistic liberal to a pessimistic realist perspective,” Pacific Review 18, no. 4 (December 2005): 468. 5 William J. Clinton, “Fundamentals of security for a new Pacific century” (address before the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, Seoul, South Korea, July 10, 1993). 6 J. N. Mak, “The Asia-Pacific security order,” in Asia-Pacific in the New World Order, ed. Anthony McGrew and Christopher Brook (London: Routledge, 1998), 116. 7 Evelyn Goh, “The ASEAN Regional Forum in United States East Asian strategy,” Pacific Review 17, no. 1 (March 2004): 55. 8 ASEAN Secretariat, www.aseansec.org/1836.htm (accessed on July 31, 2007) 9 US Department of State, “Chairman’s Statement: The Second ASEAN Regional Forum Ministerial Meeting, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam, August 1, 1995,” www.state.gov/t/ac/csbm/rd/4376.htm (accessed on November 8, 2007) 10 John Ravenhill, “The growth of intergovernmental collaboration in the Asia-Pacific region,” in Asia-Pacific in the New World Order, ed. Anthony McGrew and Christopher Brook (London: Routledge, 1998), 265. 11 Dominik Heller, “The Relevance of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) for Regional Security in the Asia-Pacific,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 27, no. 1 (April 2005): 138. 12 Joseph A. Camilleri, Regionalism in the new Asia-Pacific order, 168. 13 Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Government www.dfat.gov.au/ arf/background.html (accessed on June 18, 2007). 14 ASEAN Regional Forum, “Chairman’s Statement, the Eleventh Meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum,” (internal document, Jakarta, Indonesia, July 2, 2004). 15 ASEAN Secretariat, www.aseanregionalforum.org/Default.aspx?tabid=49 (accessed on June 18, 2007). 16 Charles I. Cohen, “The ASEAN Regional Forum,” McGill International Review, (Spring 2005): 49. 17 John Garofano, “Flexibility or irrelevance: Ways forward for the ARF,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 21, no. 1 (April 1999): 75. 18 Heller, “The Relevance of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) for Regional Security in the Asia-Pacific,” 141. 19 Ravenhill, “The growth of intergovernmental collaboration in the Asia-Pacific region,” 263–264. 20 Ibid. 21 Heller, “The Relevance of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) for Regional Security in the Asia-Pacific,” 127. 22 ASEAN Regional Forum, “Chairman’s Statement: The 16th ASEAN Regional Forum,” (internal document, Phuket, Thailand, July 23, 2009.) 23 Simon S.C. Tay with Obood Talib, “The ASEAN Regional Forum: Preparing for Preventive Diplomacy,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 19, No. 3 (December 1997), pp. 254, 258. 24 Yuzawa, “Japan’s changing conception of the ASEAN Regional Forum: from an optimistic liberal to a pessimistic realist perspective,” 472–473; John Garofano, “Power, Institutions, and the ASEAN Regional Forum,” Asian Survey 42, no. 3 (May/June 2002): 517. 25 Yu Changsen, “Dongmeng diqu luntan de mubiao yu daguo de lichang,” (“The Objectives of ARF and the Big Powers’ Strategies,”) Southeast Asian Studies (Dongnanya Yanjiu), no. 4 (July/August 2000): 25. 26 Michael Leifer, “The ASEAN Regional Forum,” Adelphi Paper, no. 302 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1996), 42.

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27 Shaun Narine, “ASEAN and the ARF: The Limits of the ‘ASEAN Way’,” Asian Survey 37, no. 10 (October 1997): 976–977. 28 Tsuyoshi Kawasaki, “Neither skepticism nor romanticism: the ASEAN Regional Forum as a solution for the Asia-Pacific Assurance Game,” Pacific Review 19, no. 2 (June 2006): 234. 29 Takeshi Yuzawa, “The Evolution of Preventive Diplomacy in the ASEAN Regional Forum,” Asian Survey 46, no. 5, (September/October 2006): 798, 800. 30 Gerald Segal, “The Asia-Pacific: what kind of challenge?” in Asia-Pacific in the New World Order, ed. Anthony McGrew and Christopher Brook (London: Routledge, 1998): 325. 31 Michael Leifer, The ASEAN Regional Forum, Adelphi Paper, no. 302 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1996), 42. 32 Shirk, “China’s Multilateral Diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific,” www.uscc.gov/ hearings/2004hearings/written_testimonies/04_02_12wrts/shirk.htm (accessed on September 1, 2008). 33 Chen Zhiming, “Dongmeng diqu luntan pinglun,” (“Comments on the ARF,”) Southeast Asian Studies (Dongnanya Yanjiu), no. 6 (November/December 1998): 37. 34 Alastair Iain Johnston, “The Myth of the ASEAN Way? Explaining the Evolution of the ASEAN Regional Forum,” in Imperfect Unions: Security Institutions over Time and Space, ed. Helga Haftendorn, Robert O. Keohane and Celeste Wallender (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 311. 35 Ralf Emmers, “The influence of the balance of power factor within the ASEAN regional forum,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 23, no. 2 (August 2001): 282. 36 Yu Changsen, “Dongmeng diqu luntan de mubiao yu daguo de lichang,” 25. 37 John Garofano, “Power, Institutions, and the ASEAN Regional Forum,” Asian Survey 42, no. 3 (May/June 2002): 519. 38 Rosemary Foot, “China in the ASEAN Regional Forum: Organizational Processes and Domestic Modes of Thought,” Asian Survey 38, no. 5 (May 1998): 432, 435. 39 Emmers, “The influence of the balance of power factor within the ASEAN regional forum,” 283. 40 Robyn Lim, “The ASEAN regional forum: Building on sand,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 20, no. 2 (August 1998): 122. 41 “Japan’s naval power: responding to new challenges,” Strategic Comments, IISS 6, no. 8 (September 2000). 42 Jeffrey Winters, “The risks and limits of a corporate foreign policy,” in Asia after the ‘Miracle’: Redefining U.S. Economic and Security Priorities, ed. Selig Harrison and Clyde V. Prestowitz (Washington, DC: Economic Strategy Institute), 228. 43 Axel Berkofsky, “China’s Asian Ambitions,” Fear Eastern Economic Review 168, no. 7 (July/August 2005): 22. 44 Yuzawa, “Japan’s changing conception of the ASEAN Regional Forum: from an optimistic liberal to a pessimistic realist perspective,” 468. 45 Wang Gungwu, “China and Southeast Asia: The Context of a New Beginning,” in Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics, ed. David Shambaugh (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California), 192. 46 Yuzawa, “Japan’s changing conception of the ASEAN Regional Forum: from an optimistic liberal to a pessimistic realist perspective,” 474–475. 47 Heller, “The Relevance of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) for Regional Security in the Asia-Pacific,” 140. 48 Mely Caballero-Anthony, “Partnership for peace in Asia: ASEAN, the ARF, and the United Nations,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 24, no. 3 (December 2002): 536. 49 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Chairman’s Statement of the Thirteenth ASEAN Regional Forum Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,” July 28, 2006, www.mofa.go.jp/ region/asia-paci/asean/conference/arf/state0607-1.html (accessed on November 8, 2006)

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50 Barry Desker, “The ARF: An Agenda for Progress” (paper presentation, CSCAP General Meeting in Canberra, Australia, December 2001). 51 Robert Karniol, “ASEAN and Japan: On a security venture,” Straits Times, March 11, 2009 http://app.mfa.gov.sg/pr/read_content.asp?View,12305 (accessed on September 20, 2009) 52 Yuzawa, “Japan’s changing conception of the ASEAN Regional Forum: from an optimistic liberal to a pessimistic realist perspective,” 464, 486–487. 53 Melissa Goh, “ASEAN Regional Forum calls for immediate Middle East truce,” Channel NewsAsia, July 28, 2006, .www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/southeastasia/ view/221820/1/.html (accessed on July 30, 2007) 54 US Department of State, “Remarks at the ASEAN Regional Forum,” www.state. gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2007/89908.htm (accessed on August 31, 2007) 55 Yu Changsen, “Dongmeng diqu luntan de mubiao yu daguo de lichang,” 24. 56 Sushil Seth, “Australia, Japan enter a new phase,” Taipei Times, March 23, 2007, www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/03/23/2003353503 (accessed on April 12, 2007). 57 Richard Halloran, “On the edge,” South China Morning Post, September 10, 2007, A.4. 58 Hiro Katsumata, Research Associate at the Centre for Governance and International Affairs, University of Bristol, United Kingdom. 5 China’s participation in Shanghai Five and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization 1 “Jiang Zemin Calls for Regional Anti-terrorism Mechanism between SCO,” People’s Daily Online, January 7, 2002, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200201/07/ print20020107_88192.html (accessed December 18, 2007). 2 Bates Gill, Rising Star: China’s New Security Diplomacy (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), 45. 3 Wang Jianwei, “China’s Multilateral Diplomacy in the New Millennium,” in China Rising: Power and Motivation in Chinese Foreign Policy, ed. Yong Deng and Fei-ling Wang (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 182. 4 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization website, www.sectsco.org/article.asp?id_ temp2=1&LanguageID=2 (accessed March 7, 2007). 5 “RIA News Agency, Moscow, in Russian 0315, ‘Russian diplomat appointed deputy CEO of Shanghai Cooperation Organization,’” BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union, January 15, 2004, p. 1. 6 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization website, www.sectsco.org/news_detail. asp?id=96&LanguageID=2 (accessed September 1, 2007). 7 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization website, www.sectsco.org/html/01190.html (accessed on April 19, 2007). 8 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization website, www.sectsco.org/html/00041.html (accessed on April 19, 2007). 9 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization website, “Declaration by the Heads of Member-States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, 5 July 2005,” www. sectsco.org/news_details.asp?id=500&Language ID=2 (accessed December 18, 2007). 10 ITAR-TASS News Wire, “approve of special services cooperation,” July 5, 2000. 11 Xu Tao, “Lun Shanghai hezuo zuzhi de jizhihua,” (“On the institutionalization of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,”) International Politics, no. 10 (2003): 1. 12 Yang Shu and Lin Yongfeng, “ZhongYa Yisilan jiduan zhuyi,” (“Islamic Fundamentalism in Central Asia,”) Eluosi ZhongYa DongOu Yanjiu (Russian, Central Asian and Eastern European Studies), no. 5 (2008): 68. 13 Yang Shu and Lin Yongfeng, “ZhongYa Yisilan jiduan zhuyi,” 68–69. 14 Hua Yujie, “Shanghai hexuo zuzhi: dique anquan yu jingji jinbu,” (“Shanghai Cooperation Organization: regional security and economic progress,”) International Politics, no. 4 (2005): 90–91.

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15 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization website, www.sectsco.org/html/01201.html (accessed April 19, 2007). 16 School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, “Declaration by the Heads of Member-States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Astana, July 5, 2005),” http://russia.shaps.hawaii.edu/fp/russia/2005/20050705_ sco_07.html (accessed March 7, 2007). 17 “SCO member states pledge efforts to deal with new security challenges,” People’s Daily Online, July 6, 2005, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200507/06/eng20050706_ 194373.html (accessed December 18, 2007). 18 “Premier Wen leaves for home after SCO meeting in Moscow,” People’s Daily Online, October 27, 2005, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200510/27/eng20051027_ 217251.html (accessed December 18, 2007). 19 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization website, www.sectsco.org/news_detail. asp=735&LanguageID=2 (accessed February 7, 2007). 20 Hu Qihua, “SCO summit flexes anti-terror muscles,” China Daily, August 8, 2005. 21 Jim Garamone, “Uzbeks ask U.S. to leave Karshi-Khanabad,” American Forces Press News, August 1, 2005. 22 The following discussion in this paragraph runs parallel to the analysis by Philippa Fogarty, “Shanghai grouping moves centre stage,” http://news.bloc.co.uk/2/h/asiapacific/5076032.stm (accessed June 25, 2007). 23 Fu Ying, “China and ASEAN in a New Era,” 310–311. 24 Zhu Tingchang, “Lun Zhongguo mulin zhengce and lilun yu shijian,” (“On the theory and practice of China’s neighborly policy,”) Zhongguo Waijiao (Chinese Foreign Affairs), no. 8 (August 2001): 18. 25 “Jiang Zemin Calls for Regional Anti-terrorism Mechanism between SCO,” http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200201/07/print20020107_88192.html (accessed December 18, 2007). 26 Du Wei, Assistant Secretary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, telephone interview by author, February 27, 2006. 27 Goh Sui Noi, “Security summit will also discuss economic ties,” Straits Times (Singapore), July 5, 2005. 28 David Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia,” International Security 29, no. 3 (Winter 2004/05): 74. 29 ‘Hu Jintao’s Speech at the SCO Moscow Summit,” People’s Daily, May 30, 2003. 30 “Hu: SCO future hinges on action,” Xinhua News Agency, July 6, 2005. 31 “SCO summit starts to push for closer regional cooperation,” Peoples’ Daily (English Edition), July 5, 2005. 32 Neil Renwick, “Contesting East Asian security leadership: China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” in China, Japan and Regional Leadership in East Asia, ed. Christopher M. Dent (Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2008), 218. 33 “Shanghai hezuo zuzhi – weiyiwu Meiguo shili jieru de guoji zuzhi,” (“Shanghai Cooperation Organization – the only international organization without the intrusion of United States power,”) 15 June 2005, www.sina.com.cn (accessed September 1, 2008). 34 Stephanie Klein-Ahlbrant and Andrew Small, “China’s New Dictatorship Diplomacy: Is Beijing Parting With Pariahs?” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 1 (January / February 2008): 46, 52. 35 Yahuda, 199–200. 36 Heda Bayron, “Shanghai Cooperation Organization Holds Biggest War Games Ahead of Leaders Summit,” Voice of America, www.voanews.com/english/2007-08-07voa11.cfm?renderforprint=1&textonly=1&TEXTMODE=1&CFID=193374084&CF TOKEN=54908393 (accessed August 7, 2007). 37 Shanghai Cooperation Organization website, “Bishkek Declaration (full-text),” www. sectsco.org/html/01659.html (accessed on September 1, 2008).

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38 “Russia for anti-money laundering zone around Afghanistan,” PakTribune, http:// Paktribune.com/news/index-shtml?187200 (accessed August 17, 2007). 39 Bruce Pannier, “Central Asia: SCO Leaders Focus on Energy, Security, Cooperation,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty www.rferl.org/featuresarticleprint/2007/08/4853ecf 7-2612-4d93-98fb-509c7cf1170.html (accessed on August 16, 2007). 40 “Chronicle of main events at SCO in 2009,” The Shanghai Cooperation Organization website, www.sectsco.org/EN/Yolder.asp (accessed on August 4, 2009). 41 School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, “Declaration by the Heads of Member-States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Astana, July 5, 2005),” http://russia.shaps.hawaii.edu/fp/russia/2005/20050705_ sco_07.html (accessed March 7, 2007). 42 Shanghai Cooperation Organization website, “Bishkek Declaration (full-text),” www. sectsco.org/html/01659.html (accessed on September 1, 2008). 43 Bruce Pannier, “Central Asia: SCO Leaders Focus on Energy, Security, Cooperation,” www.rferl.org/featuresarticleprint/2007/08/4853ecf7-2612-4d93-98fb-509c7cf1170. html (accessed on August 16, 2007). 44 Dmitry Kosyrev, “Rush demand for Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” RIA Novosti http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070817/72171635-print.html (accessed August 17, 2007). 45 Joshua Kucera, “Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summiteers Take Shots at US Presence in Central Asia,” EurasianNet, www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/ articles/eav082007a_pr.shtml (accessed August 20, 2007). 46 Bruce Pannier, “Central Asia: Summit Shows Growing Interest In Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, www.rferl.org/featuresarticleprint/ 2007/08/4e008662-0ac5-43a8-8881-baab3853319d.html (accessed August 20, 2007). 47 Shanghai Cooperation Organization website, “Regulations on Observer Status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (full-text),” www.sectsco.org/news_detail. asp?id=1485&LanguageID=2 See Articles 6, 7(1) and 7(2). 48 Peter Fedynsky, “Shanghai Cooperation Organization Seeks to Expand Energy and Security Influence,” Voice of America, www.voanews.com/english/2007-08-07-voa9. cfm?renderforprint=1; and “Energy dominates Shanghai summit,” BBC News, www. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6949021.stm (accessed August 17, 2007). 49 Marcel de Haas, “S.C.O. Summit Demonstrates its Growing Cohesion,” Power and Interest News Report (PINR), www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_printable&report_ id=673&language_id=1 (accessed August 23, 2007); and Shanghai Cooperation Organization website, “Bishkek Declaration (full-text),” www.sectsco.org/html/01659. html (accessed July 31, 2008). 50 Peter Fedynsky, “Shanghai Cooperation Organization Seeks to Expand Energy and Security Influence,” Voice of America, www.voanews.com/english/2007-08-07-voa9. cfm?renderforprint=1 (accessed August 7, 2007). 51 “Analysis: SCO energy ties,” www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/96955.html (accessed July 31, 2008). 52 “New Trends, Central Asia: Kazakhstan to Invest UD$ 800 mm in Gas Pipelines in 2006-2008,” Alexander’s Gas and Oil Connection 11, no. 18 (September 27, 2006), www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntc63974.htm (accessed July 31, 2008). 53 Ibid. 54 “Chinese, Kyrgyz Leaders Discuss Turkmen Gas Pipeline,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, www.rferl.org/featuresarticleprint/2007/08/be005fdd-03fd-4664-bdd51be88a80e394.html (accessed August 15, 2007). 55 Alexander Vershinin, “China, Turkmenistan seal $3 billion energy deal,” Associated Press, June 6, 2009. 56 Stephen Blank, “East Asia Meets Central Asia,” Korea and World Affairs 31, no. 7 (Spring 2007): 51, 61.

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57 Ashilafu Huojiayefu, “Nengyuan anquan yu WuZhong jingji hezuo,” (“Energy Security and Uzbekistan-China economic cooperation,”) Xiandai Guoji Guanxi, no. 4 (2009): 60. 58 Kevin Slaten, “China’s bigger role in Pakistan, Afghanistan,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), February 12, 2009. 59 Joyce Mann, “Western response muted to Shanghai pact’s games,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), August 18, 2007. 60 “Shanghai bloc in final planning for joint exercise,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), August 10, 2007. 61 Alexander Gabuev, “Maneuvers to Outflank US: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization launches military exercises,” Kommersant Moscow www.kommersant. com/p793960/r_527/Shanghai_ Maneuvers/ (accessed August 10, 2007). 62 “Shanghai bloc in final planning for joint exercise,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), August 10, 2007. 63 Joyce Mann, “Ambassador outlines mainland’s major terrorist threats,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), August 11, 2007. 64 “Drill not to push SCO into military alliance – experts,” China Daily, www.chinadaily. com.cn/china/2007-08/12/content_6022763.htm (accessed August 12, 2007). 65 Joshua Kucera, “Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit Prepares to Open in Bishkek,” EurasianNet, www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav081507a_ pr.shtml (accessed August 15, 2007). 66 Nikolas K. Gvosdev, “A ‘Peace Mission’ Without the West?” National Interest Online, www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=15144 (accessed August 10, 2007). 67 Joyce Mann, “Shanghai bloc signs deals on security and a global role,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), August 17, 2007. 68 ‘“Peace Mission 2009’ improves anti-terror response, Chinese military officer,” People’s Daily Online, July 24, 2009, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/ 90883/6709137.html (accessed August 31, 2009). 69 EurAsEc includes all SCO members except China in addition to Belarus, whereas CSTO includes all SCO members except China in addition to Belarus and Armenia. 70 “SCO, CSTO sign security cooperation memorandum,” Interfax (Moscow), October 5, 2007; and Erica Marat, “Russia and China Unite Forces in Peace Mission 2007,” Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, www.cacianalyst.org/view_article.php?articleid-4748 (accessed April 4, 2007). 71 S. Frederick Starr, “A Strong Japanese Initiative in Central Asia,” Central AsiaCaucasus Institute: Analysis, www.cacianalyst.org/view_article.php?articleid=2789 (accessed March 19, 2009); “Press-Release: Central Asia Plus Japan Dialogue Continues,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan, http://mfa.uz/ eng/press_and_media_service/news_and_events/150708e_1.mgr (accessed March 19, 2009). 72 Michael Richardson, “Sino-Russian Ties: Cold reality belies warm words,” Straits Times (Singapore), July 4, 2008, p.26. 6 China’s participation in ASEAN + 3 and ASEAN + China 1 Injoo Sohn, “Learning to Co-operate: China’s Multilateral Approach to Asian Financial Cooperation,” China Quarterly, no. 195 (June 2008): 320. 2 Shigeko Hayashi, Japan and East Asian Monetary Regionalism (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 109–110. 3 Paul Evans, “Nascent Asian regionalism and Its Implications for Canada” (unpublished manuscript prepared for the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada’s Roundtable on the Foreign Policy Dialogue and Canada-Asia Relations, Vancouver, BC, March 27, 2003), p. 4. According to Evans, while intra-Asian trade in the early 1980s was about 25 percent of all trade conducted by Asian countries, 20 years later, the figure had exceeded 50 percent.

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4 David Capie, “Rival Regions? East Asian Regionalism and its Challenge to the AsiaPacific,” in Asia Pacific: A Region in Transition, ed. James Rolfe (Honolulu, HI, AsiaPacific Center of Security Studies, 2004), 155. 5 Hayashi, 116. 6 Tran Van Hoa, “Globalization, Crises and the Emergence of New Asian Regionalism: Genesis and Current Development,” in New Asian Regionalism: Responses to Globalization, ed. Tran Van Hoa and Charles Harvie (Gordonsville, VA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 12–13. 7 ASEAN Secretariat, “Joint Communiqué of the First ASEAN Plus Three Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC+3),” January 10, 2004, www.aseansec. org/15645.htm (accessed on September 1, 2008). 8 Wen Jiabao, “Zhongguo de fazhan he Yazhou de zhenxing,” (“China’s Development and Asia’s Revival,”) (speech, ASEAN Trade and Investment Summit, Bali, Indonesia, October 7, 2003). 9 Kuik, “Multilateralism in China’s ASEAN Policy: Its Evolution, Characteristics, and Aspiration,” 116. 10 “ASEAN Plus Three e-government center likely to be set up in Seoul,” Xinhua News Agency, May 26, 2005. 11 Kitti Prasirtsuk, “Japan, China and ASEAN in East Asian Community Building” (lecture, Hong Kong Baptist University Department of Government and International Studies, Kowloon Tong, N.T., Hong Kong, October 22, 2007). 12 Christopher M. Dent, “Taiwan and the New Regional Political Economy of East Asia,” China Quarterly, no. 182 (May 2005): 390–391. 13 “Text – Joint Statement of ASEAN+3 finance ministers,” Reuters, May 4, 2008, www. reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=CNTSEO7774120080504 (accessed on November 11, 2008). 14 Peng Bin, “ZhongRiHan Dongmeng jianquyu waichu zijiu, chou1200yimeiyuan, Yazhou huobi jijin xianchuqing,” (“China-Japan-South Korea-ASEAN establish regional self-help foreign reserves, prepares US$ 120 billion, Asian Monetary Fund takes shape,”) Xianggang Jingji Ribao, May 4, 2009, p. A15. 15 Dent, “Taiwan and the New Regional Political Economy of East Asia,” 392. 16 “Woguo ying jiji canyu bing zhudao yazhou zhaiquan shichang de fazhan,” (“Our country should actively participate in and lead the Asian Bond Market,”) Lingdao canyue (Leadership Reference Reading), September 15, 2004. 17 Sheldon Simon, “ASEAN and Multilateralism: The Long, Bumpy Road to Community,” Contemporary Southeast Asia. 30, no. 2 (2008): 277. 18 ASEAN Secretariat, “Chairman's Statement of the 9th ASEAN Plus Three Foreign Ministers Meeting,” July 22, 2008, www.41amm.sg/amm/index.php/web/info_for_ delegates/statements/chairman_s_statement_of_the_9th_asean_plus_three_foreign_ ministers_meeting_22_july_2008_singapore (accessed on February 27, 2009). 19 Dirk Nabers, “The Social Construction of international institutions: the case of ASEAN+3,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 3, no. 1 (February 2003): 130. 20 Alice D. Ba, “The Politics and Economics of ‘East Asia’ in ASEAN-China Relations,” in China and Southeast Asia, ed. Ho Khai Leong and Samuel C. Y. Ku (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 2005), 181. 21 Deng Xianchao and Xu Derong, “Lun Zhongguo Yazhou diquzhuyi zhanlue de goujian ji yingxiang yinsu,” (“China’s Strategy of Asian Regionalism,”) Dongnanya Yanjiu (Southeast Asian Studies), no. 2 (2005): 6. 22 ASEAN Secretariat, “Joint Communiqué of the First ASEAN Plus Three Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC+3),” www.aseansec.org/15645.htm (accessed on September 1, 2008). 23 ASEAN Secretariat, “ASEAN Plus Three Cooperation Work Plan 2007-2017,” www. aseansec.org/21104.pdf (accessed on February 27, 2009).

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24 East Asian Vision Group (EAVG), “Towards an East Asian Community: Region of Peace, Prosperity and Progress,” EAVG Report (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat, 2002), 21. 25 Rodolfo C. Severino, Southeast Asia in Search of an ASEAN Community (Singapore: ISEAS, 2006), 303–304. 26 Tan Yingzi, “Trilateral meeting to boost relations,” October 10, 2009, www.chinadaily. com.cn/china/2009-10/10/content_8774154.htm# (accessed on October 11, 2009). 27 CNN.com, “Nukes, financial woes top agenda for Asian talks,” October 10, 2009, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/10/china.japan.skorea.talks/index. html (accessed on October 11, 2009). 28 Jurgen Haacke, ASEAN’s Diplomatic and Security Culture: Origins, Development and Prospects (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon 2003), 125. 29 Haacke, ASEAN’s Diplomatic and Security Culture, 129. 30 ASEAN Secretariat, “The First Meeting of the ASEAN-China Joint Cooperation Committee: Beijing, February 28–29, 1997, Joint Press Release,” ASEAN Economic Bulletin, (July 1997): 87. 31 Rodolfo C. Severino, 278–279. 32 Noel M. Morada, “Institutionalization of Regional Order: Between Norms and Balance of Power,” in Regional Order in East Asia: ASEAN and Japan Perspective, ed. Jun Tsunekawa (Tokyo: National Institute for Defense Studies, 2007), 34. 33 “Zhongguo Dongmeng jiaqiang shanghui duijie,” (“China and ASEAN strengthen trade links,” Ta Kung Pao (Hong Kong), August 11, 2009, p. A23 34 ASEAN Secretariat, “Press Release – China strengthens cooperation with ASEAN,” April 20, 2009, www.aseansec.org/PR-China-15bn-fund.pdf (accessed on September 10, 2009). 35 Simon, “ASEAN and Multilateralism: The Long, Bumpy Road to Community,” 282. 36 Clarissa Oon, “Beijing to spur investment with soft loans,” Straits Times, July 5, 2005, p. 9. 37 Lim Tin Seng, “China’s Active Role in the Mekong Sub-region: A ‘Win-Win’ Outcome?” EAI Background Brief No. 397 (Singapore: East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore, 2008), 4. 38 “Ministry of Commerce outlines measures for promoting GMS Co-op,” Xinhua News Agency, http://english.sina.com/business/1/2005/0703/37018.html (accessed on September 20, 2008). 39 Thomas Lum, Wayne M. Morrison, and Bruce Vaughn, CRS Report for Congress: China’s “Soft Power” in Southeast Asia (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service 2008), 6. 40 David Fullbrook, “China’s Growing Influence in Cambodia,” Asia Times, October 6, 2006. 41 Brian McCartan, “China Rubber Demands Stretches Laos,” Asia Times, December 19, 2007. 42 Lum, Morrison and Vaughn, 7. 43 “Vietnam to Borrow Nearly 200 Mln U.S. Dollars from China,” People’s Daily Online, October 30, 2006, http://english.people.com.cn (accessed on November 5, 2008) 44 Jeffrey York, “The Junta’s Enablers,” International News, October 6, 2007; David Steinberg, “Burma: Feel-Good U.S. Sanctions Wrongheaded,” Yale Global Online, May 19, 2004, www.narinjara.com/Reports/BReport.asp (accessed on December 15, 2008) 45 Lim, “China’s Active Role in the Mekong Sub-region: A ‘Win-Win’ Outcome?” 11. 46 “China to invest $544m in projects in Thailand,” Straits Times, July 2, 2008. 47 “China competes with West in aid to its neighbors,” New York Times, September 18, 2006. 48 ASEAN Secretariat, www.aseansec.org/16635.htm and www.aseansec.org/16646.htm (accessed on December 15, 2008).

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49 Chia Siow Yue, “ASEAN-China Free Trade Area” (paper presentation, AEP Conference, Hong Kong, 12–14 April 2004). 50 Calculated from “Myanmar PM to attend China-ASEAN expo,” China Daily, October 17, 2008, www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-10/17/content_7116249.htm (accessed on September 19, 2009); and Lum, Morrison and Vaughn, 9. 51 Sree Kumar and Sharon Siddique, Southeast Asia: The Diversity Dilemma (Singapore: Select Publishing, 2008), 52. 52 Hou Songling and Chi Diantang, “Dongnanya yu zhongya: Zhongguo zai xinshiji de diyuan zhanlue xuanze,” (“Southeast Asia and Central Asia: China’s geo-political strategic choice in the new century,”) Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Affairs), no. 8 (August 2003): 28. 53 Lum, Morrison and Vaughn, 10. 54 World Investment Report, 2005, as quoted in Sree Kumar and Sharon Siddique, Southeast Asia: The Diversity Dilemma (Singapore: Select Publishing, 2008), 52. 55 Donald Greenlees, “ASEAN hails the benefit of friendship with China,” International Herald Tribune, November 1, 2006, www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/01news/asean. php?page=1 (accessed on November 5, 2008). 56 Han Yang, “Zhongguo Dongmeng FTA qinian chenggong ‘touzhi xieyi’xiaojie touzhi baolei Zhongguo FDI jiashu maoyi pingheng,” (“China ASEAN FTA seven-year success on ‘Investment Agreement” demolished investment barriers China’s FDI hastens trade balance,”) 21 Shiji Jingji Baodao, April 13, 2009, p. 3. 57 Christian Caryl and Akiko Kashiwagi, “This Nation is an Island,” Newsweek, May 12, 2008, p. 44. 58 AFP, “ASEAN Should consider Myanmar expulsion: Hillary,” Times of India, 22 July, 2009, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/World/Rest-of-World/ASEANshould-consider-Myanmar-expulsion-Hillary/articleshow/4806349.cms (accessed on September 9, 2009). 59 Thitinan Pongsudhirak, “Mainland Southeast Asia, ASEAN and the Major Powers in East Asian Regional Order,” in Regional Order in East Asia: ASEAN and Japan Perspective, ed. Jun Tsunekawa (Tokyo: National Institute for Defense Studies, 2007), 107. 60 Pongsudhirak, “Mainland Southeast Asia, ASEAN and the Major Powers in East Asian Regional Order,” 108. 61 ASEAN Secretariat, “Deepening ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership: ASEAN Chairman’s Statement at the eighth ASEAN-China summit,” November 29, 2004, www.aseansec.org/16749.htm (accessed on November 5, 2008). 62 Raissa Robles, “Beijing forces Manila retreat over Spratlys,” South China Morning Post February 12, 2009. 63 Yu Xintian, “Zhongguo peiyang Dongya rentong de shikao,” (“Contemplating China’s Cultivation of East Asian identity,”) Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Affairs), no. 9 (2008): 16. 64 David Capie, “Rival Regions? East Asian Regionalism and its Challenge to the AsiaPacific,” in Asia Pacific: A Region in Transition, ed. James Rolfe (Honolulu, HI AsiaPacific Center of Security Studies, 2004), 155. 65 Rodolfo C. Severino, The Straits Times, January 3, 2006. 66 Luu Chao, “Zhongguo Queli DongbeiYa anquan huanjing de zhanlue xuanze,” (“Strategic Choices in establishing China’s Northeast Asian security environment,”) Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Affairs), no. 10 (2008): 24. 7 China’s participation in the Four-Party Talks and Six-Party Talks 1 Peter M. Beck and Nicholas Reader, “China and North Korea,” Korea and World Affairs 30, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 64–69.

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2 Peter M. Beck and Nicholas Reader, “China and North Korea,” Korea and World Affairs 30, no. 1 (Summer 2006): 212. 3 “DPRK, U.S. Agree on Six Points at High-level Talks,” People’s Korea, www1. korea-np.co.jp/pk/061st_issue/98091705.htm (accessed March 19, 2009). 4 John Barry Kotch, “Dealing with North Korea: Take another shot at Four party talks,” Japan Times, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo2003072a1.html (accessed March 19, 2009). 5 Ibid. 6 “North Korea on the Brink: Politics and Possibilities on the Eve of the Four Party Talks,” Global Reporting Network Publications, www.bu.edu/globalbeat/pubs/ib21. html (accessed March 19, 2009). 7 Ibid. 8 “Foreign Ministry spokesman on upcoming Four-Party Talks,” Korean Central News Agency, www.kcna.co.jp/item/1997/9711/news11/23.htm (accessed March 19, 2009); and “N-S Korea, China and U.S. Agree to Continue Peace Talks,” People’s Korea www1.korea-np.co.jp/pk/079th_issue/99012708.htm (accessed March 19, 2009). 9 John Catalinotto, “What’s behind collapse of Korea talks?” Workers’ World, www. hartford-hwp.com/archives/55a/120.html (accessed March 19, 2009). 10 Peter Brookes, “The Four Party Talks: A Perspective,” Pacific Forum CSIS, www.csis. org/media/csis/pubs/pac9812.pdf (accessed March 19, 2009). 11 “Transcript: Roth statement, briefing on Korea four-party talks,” USIS Washington File, www.fas.org/news/dprk/1997/97121003_epo.html (accessed March 19, 2009); and “Text: Korea Four Party Talks August 9 Joint Press Statement,” USIS Washington File, www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/dprk/1999/990809-dprk-usia1.htm (accessed March 19, 2009). 12 Keyu Gong, “The North Korean Nuclear Issue and China’s National Interests,” Korea and World Affairs 30, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 468. 13 Gady A. Epstein, “China Seen Toughening Stance Against North Korea Nuclear Developments,” Baltimore Sun, March 28, 2003; and David M. Lampton, “China: Fed Up with North Korea,” Washington Post, June 4, 2003. 14 Interview with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Fox Sunday News, February 9, 2003. 15 Yongho Kim and Myung Chul Kim, “China in the North Korean Nuclear Quagmire: Rethinking Chinese influence on North Korea,” Issues & Studies 44, no. 3 (September 2008): 152. 16 Jae Ho Chung, “China and the Korean Peninsula: From Interest Revaluation to Strategic Realignment,” in Power Shift, ed. David Shambaugh (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 156. 17 Wang, “China’s Multilateral Diplomacy in the New Millennium,” 186. 18 Jae Ho Chung, “China and the Korean Peninsula: From Interest Revaluation to Strategic Realignment,” 156–157. 19 Ma Zhongke, “Chaohe liufang huitan: weiji he jihui,” (“Six-Party Talks on North Korea Nuclear Issue: Crisis and Opportunity,”) DongnanYa Yanjiu (Southeast Asian Studies), no. 1 (2004): 45. 20 “Handshakes and Smiling Faces Kick Off Six-Way Talks,” Xinhua News Agency, August 27, 2003. 21 Anne Wu, “What China Whispers to North Korea,” The Washington Quarterly 28, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 40–43. 22 Yongho Kim and Myung Chul Kim, “China in the North Korean Nuclear Quagmire: Rethinking Chinese influence on North Korea,” 161. 23 Wang, “China’s Multilateral Diplomacy in the New Millennium,” 186. 24 Yiwei Wang, “China’s Role in Dealing with the North Korean Issue,” Korea Observer 36, no. 3 (Autumn 2005): 484–485.

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25 Beck and Reader, “China and North Korea,” Korea and World Affairs 30, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 60. 26 Yu Yoshitake, “Accord at 6-party talks still elusive,” asahi.com, www.asahi.com/ english/Herald-asahi/TKY200508030118.html (accessed on September 1, 2005); and “China presents draft for 6-party talks,” Xinhua News Agency, July 30, 2005. 27 “Nuclear Pact on shaky foundations,” South China Morning Post, September 20, 2005. 28 Jae-soon Chang, “North Korea Demands Nuke Reactor From U.S.,” Associated Press, September 19, 2005. 29 Beck and Reader, “China and North Korea,” Korea and World Affairs 30, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 56–57. 30 Christopher Twomey, “Explaining Chinese Foreign Policy toward North Korea: navigating the Scylla and Charybdis of proliferation and instability,” Journal of Contemporary China Vol. 17, No. 56 (August 2008): 417. 31 Yongho Kim and Myung Chul Kim, 170. 32 “North Korea talks set to resume,” BBC News, October 31, 2006. 33 Twomey, 417. 34 Alexa Olsen, “Korean Nuclear Deal Delays Disarmament,” Associated Press, February 13, 2007. 35 Wang Yan, “Full text of joint document of the second session of the sixth round sixparty talks,” China View, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-10/03/ content_6829017.htm (accessed on September 1, 2008). 36 Madhuchanda Ghosh, “India and Japan’s Growing Synergy: From a Political to a Strategic Focus,” Asian Survey 48, no. 2 (March/April 2008): 289. 37 Peter Alford, “Japan spurns N. Korea aid demand,” The Australian, February 12, 2007. 38 “Four Delegations to Six-party Talks Arrive in Beijing,” Xinhua News Agency, August 26, 2003. 39 Interview with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Fox Sunday News, February 9, 2003. 40 Xiong Zhengyan, Xu Song and Hao Yalin, “Six-party talks endeavor to translate commitment into action,” People’s Daily, November 11, 2005. 41 Beck and Reader, “China and North Korea,” Korea and World Affairs 30, no. 1 (Summer 2006): 224. 42 Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia,” 80. 43 US-Korea Relations: Opinion Leaders Seminar (Washington DC: Korea Economic Institute. July 2003), 6–8. 44 Twomey, 412. 45 Bill Powell, “Your Move, China,” Time, June 15, 2009: 15. 46 Bill Powell and Stephen Kim, “Spotlight: North Korea’s Nuclear Test,” Time, June 8, 2009: 10. 47 “Report: North Korea open to nuke talks,” CNN.com, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/ WORLD/asiapcf/10/05/nkorea.talks/index.html (accessed October 9, 2009). 48 Luu Chao, “Zhongguo Queli DongbeiYa anquan huanjing de zhanlue xuanze,” (“Strategic Choices in establishing China’s Northeast Asian security environment,”) Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Affairs), no. 10 (2008): 23. 49 Liu Zhongli and Sheng Wei, “ZhongRiHan FTA zhanlue bijiao yanjiu,” (“A comparative Study of China-Japan-South Korea FTA strategies,”) DongbeiYa luntan (Northeast Asian Forum), no. 1 (2008): 54. 50 Tae-Hwan Kwak, “In Search of the Korean Peninsula Peace Building Regime,” Pacific Focus, 20(2), Fall 2005, 155. 51 “S Korean president: Talks on permanent peace should involve four nations,” People’s Daily Online (English), www.english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/6286994. html (accessed March 19, 2009). 52 “Four-party talks to discuss Korean peace pact,” channelnewsasia.com, www. channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/285881/1/.html (accessed March 19, 2009).

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53 Akiko Fukushima, “Measures to Institutionalize Security Cooperation in Northeast Asia: A Japanese View,” Korean Journal of Security Affairs12, no. 2 (December 2007): 87–88. 54 Jonathan D. Pollack, “The Transformation of the Asian Security Order: Assessing China’s Impact,” in Power Shift, ed. David Shambaugh (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 343. 8 China’s venture into the Pacific 1 Sandra Tarte, “Japan’s ODA in the Pacific island states,” in Japan’s Foreign Aid: Old Continuities and New Directions, ed. David Arase (New York: Routledge, 2005), 235. 2 Government Of Niue, “Forum Task Force Update From The Desk Of The Forum Co-Ordinator,” http://209.85.175.104/search?q=cache:Y9dPjANz9g4J:39pifniue2008. gov.nu/update.pdf+PIF+dialogue+partners&hl=zh-TW&ct=clnk&cd=31 (accessed on September 4, 2008). 3 “Japan to Increase ODA to S. Pacific Nations,” Jiji Press English News Service, April 21, 2000, p. 1. 4 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “White Paper on Official Development Assistance (ODA) 2006, Chart 111-14 Changes in ODA Disbursements by Regions,” www.mofa.go.jp/policy/oda/white/2006/ODA2006/html/zuhyo/index.htm (accessed on January 25, 2008). Figure calculated on the basis of data provided. 5 Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Government, “ThirtyFirst Pacific Islands Forum,” www.dfat.gov.au/geo/spacific/regional_orgs/pif31_ communique.html (accessed on April 9, 2007). 6 Elizabeth Feizkhah, “Dateline – Strategy: Making friends,” Asiaweek, June 15, 2001, p. 1. 7 Ron Crocombe, “The Fourth Wave: Chinese in the Pacific Islands in the Twenty-First Century” (occasional paper no. 1, Center for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora (CSCSD), Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, May 2007), 30. 8 Michael Field, “China behind paradigm shift in South Pacific,” www.michaelfield.org/ regional6.htm (accessed on April 4, 2007). 9 Anthony Van Fossen, “The Struggle for Recognition: Diplomatic Competition between China and Taiwan in Oceania,” Journal of Chinese Political Science 12, no. 2 (2007): 137–138. 10 “Aid package announced for South Pacific states,” China Daily, April 5, 2006, p. 1. 11 Ibid. 12 People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Commerce, “Remarks by Chen Deming, Minister of Commerce at the Investment, Trade and Tourism Ministerial Conference of the China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum,” http://cpicforumenglish.mofcom.gov.cn/aarticle/za/200809/20080905784156. html (accessed on January 24, 2009). 13 Leora Moldofsky, “China vows aid package for South Pacific allies,” Financial Times, April 6, 2006, p. 5. 14 “China offers new aid and trade help to Pacific countries,” China Daily, http://bbs. chinadaily.com.cn/viewthreat.php?tid=510484 (accessed on April 5, 2007). 15 People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Commerce, “Remarks by Chen Deming, Minister of Commerce at the Investment, Trade and Tourism Ministerial Conference of the China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum,” http://cpicforumenglish.mofcom.gov.cn/aarticle/za/200809/20080905784156. html (accessed on January 24, 2009). 16 “Pacific Islands politics: China and Japan offer funding,” EIU View Wire, June 16, 2006. 17 Bruce M. Koppel and Robert M. Orr, Jr., Japan’s Foreign Aid: Power and Policy in a New Era (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1993), 232.

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18 Tarte, 237–238. 19 Koppel and Orr, 232. 20 Steve Herman, “Japan Struggles to Maintain Pacific Influence as China’s Might Grows,” www.bloggernews.net/2006/05/japan-struggles-to-maintain-pacific.html (accessed on March 5, 2007). 21 David McNeill, “Japan and the Whaling Ban: Siege Mentality Fuels ‘Sustainability’ Claims,” Japan Focus, February 13, 2007, http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2353 (accessed on February 19, 2008). 22 Ibid. 23 Sue Windybank, “China’s Pacific Strategy: The Changing Geopolitics of Australia’s ‘Special Patch,’” www.cis.org.au/exechigh/Eh2006/EH39306.htm (accessed on April 5, 2007). 24 Jiang Zemin, speech at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Boston, MA, November 1, 1997. 25 Van Fossen, 135–136. 26 Tamara Renee Shie, “China woos the South Pacific,” Asia Times, 29 March 2006, www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HC29Ad01.html (accessed on April 5, 2007). 27 Ko Shu-ling, “Marshall Islands president set to visit,” Taipei Times, June 26, 2007, p. 3. 28 Peter Kenilorea, Tell It As It Is: Autobiography of Rt. Hon. Sir Peter Kenilora, KBE, PC Solomon Islands’ First Prime Minister (Taipei: Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies, RCHSS, Academia Sinica, 2008), 288. 29 Alan Goodall, “Peddling Influence with Fiji,” Japan Times, August 29, 2008, http:// search.japantimes.co.jp/print/eo20080829a1.html (accessed on September 9, 2008). 30 Thom Cookes, “Pawn of the Pacific,” Special Broadcasting Service, February 25, 2004, http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/pawn_of_the_pacific_130342 (accessed on September 4, 2008). 31 Lee Spears and Zhao Yidi, “China to Raise 2008 Military Budget by a Record 19.4% (Update1),”Bloomberg Press, March 4, 2008, www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2 0601080&sid=a36iAaScSAFQ&refer=asia (accessed on October 6, 2009). 32 The “first island chain” would refer to the Japanese isles, the Philippines, and the island of Borneo. 33 Bertil Lintner, “Growing Chinese presence in the Pacific islands unsettles locals and poses questions for the US,” YaleGlobal Online Magazine, February 13, 2007 http:// yaleglobal.edu/display.article?id=8751 (accessed on February 19, 2008). 34 Arthur Bight, “Australia and Japan sign defense pact,” Christian Science Monitor, March 14, 2007, www.csmonitor.com/2007/0314/p99s01-duts.html (accessed on April 9, 2007). 35 James Jiann Hua To, “The Overseas Chinese in Tonga,” Tokyo Foundation, www. tokyofoundation.org/en/articles/the-overseas-chinese-in-tonga (accessed on September 4, 2008). 36 Kalinga Seneviratne, “South Pacific: Chinese Relief From Domineering Australia,” Inter Press Service News Agency, April 17, 2006, http://ipsnews.net/print. asp?idnews=32909 (accessed on February 19, 2008). 37 Field, “China behind paradigm shift in South Pacific,” www.michaelfield.org/ regional6.htm (accessed on April 4, 2007). 38 This figure was given to the author at the International Conference on “Greater China in an Era of Globalization” at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, July 14-15, 2008, by a Chinese scholar who preferred to remain anonymous. 39 Benjamin Reilly, “Dragon in paradise: China’s rising star in Oceania,” National Interest, June 22, 2003, www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-105369903.html (accessed on February 19, 2008). 40 Tarte, 237–241.

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41 Lance Polu, “Samoa to get closer to China and Japan economic aid,” Talamua Media and Publications, July 2, 2008, http://talamua.com/index.php?option=com_content&t ask=view&id=154&Itemid=9 (accessed on September 4, 2008). 42 “Okinotorishima,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinotorishima (accessed on June 16, 2008); Norimitsu Onishi, “2 rocks in hard place for Japan and China,” International Herald Tribune, July 11, 2005, www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/10/news/ japan.php (accessed on June 16, 2008). 43 Corrupting South Pacific island countries with massive infusion of aid for the purpose of getting their votes at the United Nations General Assembly was a charge leveled against China by the Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael V. Hayden. See Bill Gertz, “Hayden takes China to Task,” Washington Times, March 13, 2008, www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080313/NATION/330455152/0/ FOREIGN01 (accessed on March 16, 2008). 44 People’s Daily, “Japan offers 50 bln yen to island nations to ensure secure, prosperous Pacific region,” http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90778/90858/90863/6664294.pdf (accessed on September 8, 2009); and Deng Shasha, “Japan, Pacific island nations vow to boost co-op environment issues,” Xinhua News Agency, http://news.xinhuanet.com/ english/2009-05/22/content_11420782.htm (accessed on September 8, 2009). 45 Over the last few years, the US military has been increasing its presence in Guam, an island located just north of the Federated States of Micronesia and owned by the USA, such as moving three nuclear-powered attack submarines to Guam’s Apra Harbor, basing F-15 fighter jets, B-52 bombers, B-2 stealth bombers and Global Hawk unmanned spy planes on Andersen Air Force Base, and relocating soldiers from the Japanese island of Okinawa to Guam. However, the US military build-up seems to be related to preparing for possible tensions over the Taiwan Straits, and not for any contingencies in the Pacific Ocean. See Associated Press, “US military build-up on Guam related to tensions over Taiwan,” South China Morning Post, April 16, 2007, p. 4. 46 Tarte, 238. 47 People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Commerce, “Brief Introductions to the Investment, Trade and Tourism Ministerial Conference of the China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum,” http://cpicforumenglish. mofcom.gov.cn/aarticle/zb/200807/20080705687467.html (accessed on January 24, 2009). 48 “Australia Encourages Japanese RAMSI Participation,” July 21, 2008, Weekend Australian , www.pacificmagazine.net/news/2008/07/21/australia-encouragesjapanese-ramsi-participation (accessed on September 9, 2008); and Benjamin Reilly, “Japan’s Return to Guadalcanal,” August 1, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB121753980629502131.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries (accessed on September 9, 2008). 49 Kalinga Seneviratne, “South Pacific: Chinese Relief From Domineering Australia,” http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=32909 (accessed on February 19, 2008). 50 Lin Maoling, “tegao/taipingyang daoguo zhanlue diwei yinfa Zhongguo Riben dajiaoliang,” (“Special Report/The strategic position of Pacific island countries provokes a tussle between China and Japan,”), Singtao Daily, May 29, 2006, www.singtaonet. com:82/world/t20060529_226656.html (accessed on April 5, 2007). 51 Fergus Hanson, “The Dragon Looks South” (working paper, Lowy Institute for International Policy, June 2008), 11–13. 9 Conclusion 1 Shiping Tang, “China’s regional strategy: an interpretation” (working paper, Center for Regional Security Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, 2004). 18.

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2 Robert Boyer, “Asian Integration: What can be learnt from the European Union?” interview by Masahiro Katsuno (RIETI, February 6, 2003), www.rieti.go.jp/en/events/ bbl/03020601.html (accessed August 20, 2008). 3 Deepak Nair, “Regionalism in the Asia Pacific/East Asia: A Frustrated Regionalism?” Contemporary Southeast Asia 31, no. 2 (2008): 122; and East Asia Vision Group (EAVG) Report, Towards an East Asian Community, 2001, 73, www.aseansec. org/4918.htm (assessed July 1, 2009) 4 This linkage between institutional designs of regional processes and nature of cooperation was observed by Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston, “Conclusion: institutional features, cooperative effects, and the agenda for further research on comparative regionalism,” in Crafting Cooperation: Regional International Institutions in Comparative Perspective, ed. Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 268–269. 5 Huntington, 22. Tae-hyo Kim, “The Six-Way Multilateral Approach: Dilemma for Every Party,” Korea and World Affairs 27, no. 3 (2003): 353. 6 George W. Downs, David M. Rocke, and Peter N. Barsoom, “Managing the Evolution of Multilateralism,” International Organization 52, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 397–419. 7 “Chinese Delegation Submits Position Document on New Security Concept to ASEAN Forum,” Beijing Xinhua Domestic Service, August 1, 2002. 8 Goldstein, “An Emerging China’s Emerging Grand Strategy, A Neo-Bismarkian Turn?” 73. 9 Daniel C. Lynch, “China’s Quest for Soft Power and Cultural Security” (public lecture, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong, January 9, 2009). 10 Shirk, “China’s Multilateral Diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific,” www.uscc.gov/ hearings/2004hearings/written_testimonies/04_02_12wrts/shirk.htm (accessed September 1, 2008). 11 Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping, “China’s Regional Strategy,” in Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics, ed. David Shambaugh (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California, 2005), 52–53. 12 Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and East Asia Institute (EAI), www.icpsr.umich. edu/cocoon/TPDRC/STUDY/04650.xml (accessed March 1, 2009). 13 Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and East Asia Institute (EAI), www.asiaing.com/ asia-soft-power-survey-2008.html (accessed March 1, 2009). 14 This argument is made in Joern Dosch, “Who’s leading who in ASEAN-China relations? Community-building versus Pax Sinica in the management of regional security,” in China, Japan and Regional Leadership in East Asia, ed. Christopher M. Dent (Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2008), 173. 15 Saori Katada, “From a supporter to a challenger? Japan’s currency leadership in dollardominated East Asia,” Review of International Political Economy 15, no. 3 (August 2008): 407. 16 Ba, “The Politics and Economics of ‘East Asia’ in ASEAN-China Relations,” 182. 17 Zhang Yunlin, “Tanqiu Dongya de quyu zhuyi,” (“Inquiring into East Asia’s regionalism,”) Dangdai Yatai (Contemporary Asia-Pacific), no. 12 (2004): 3–7. 18 Research Fellow at the Shanghai Institute of International Affairs who prefers to remain anonymous, interview by author, Xian, China, November 7, 2007. 19 Editorial, “China must calm the waters as it builds navy,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), October 10, 2009, A12. 20 Elizabeth Wishnick, interview by author, Hong Kong, September 25, 2008. 21 Hiro Katsumata, David Martin Jones and Michael L. R. Smith, “Correspondence – ASEAN, Regional Integration and State Sovereignty,” International Security 33, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 186. 22 David E. Sanger, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power (London: Bantam Press, 2009), 391.

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23 Yu Xintian, “Zhongguo peiyang Dongya rentong de shikao,” (“Contemplating China’s Cultivation of East Asian identity,”) Zhongguo Waijiao (China’s Foreign Affairs), no. 9 (2008): 15, 21. 24 The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, “Soft Power in Asia: Results of a 2008 Multinational Survey of Public Opinion,” www.thechicagocouncil.org/UserFiles/ Files/POS_Topline%20Reports/Asia%20Soft%20Power%202008/Chicago%20 Council%20Soft%20Power%20Reports-%20Final%206-11-08.pdf (accessed on August 30, 2008). 25 Shinzo Abe, “Confluence of the Two Seas” (speech, Parliament of the Republic of India, New Delhi, India, August 22, 2007). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/pmv0708/speech-2.html (accessed January 16, 2008). 26 (Major-General) Dadi Susanto, “Yindunixiya xinfangwuzhanlue jiepou – liantan yu Zhongguo zai diqu anquan fangmian de hezuo,” (“Analyzing Indonesia’s new lines of defence – and speaking on cooperation with China on aspects of regional security,”) Southeast Asian Studies (DongNanYa Yanjiu), no. 5 (2007): 6. 27 Xinhua, “China supports ‘East Asian Community’ concept mentioned by new Japanese PM,” People’s Daily Online, http://english1.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/ 6760964.html (accessed October 9, 2009). 28 Madhuchanda Ghosh, “India and Japan’s Growing Synergy: From a Political to a Strategic Focus,” Asian Survey 48, no. 2 (March/April 2008): 293–294. 29 David C. Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 61.

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Public Lectures (in Chinese) Jiang, Zemin. Speech, Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Boston, MA, November 1, 1997. Wen, Jiabao. “Zhongguo de fazhan he Yazhou de zhenxing.” (“China’s Development and Asia’s Revival.”) Speech, ASEAN Trade and Investment Summit, Bali, Indonesia, October 7, 2003.

Unpublished Interview (in English) Wishnick, Elizabeth. Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Montclair State University. Interview by author, September 25, 2008, Hong Kong.

Unpublished Interview (in Chinese) Du, Wei. Assistant secretary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Telephone interview by author, February 27, 2006. Hong Kong. Tape recording.

Index

4PT (Four-Party Talks) 25, 87–9, 96–7, 115; China’s participation 4, 87; failure 87–9; institutionalization 89, 92, 93; Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO) 88; Korean War 87, 88, 90, 96–7; North Korea’s nuclear disarmament 4, 87, 88, 96–7; origins 87–8; unification of Korean peninsula 4, 96–7; see also 4PT members; 6PT 4PT members: China 88, 89; North Korea 88–9; South Korea 88, 89; United States 88–9; see also 4PT 6PT (Six-Party Talks) 2, 20, 87, 89–97, 114, 115, 120; aims 92, 95; alternative security arrangements for Northeast Asia 95–8; ASEAN 8; future of 95–7; inter-Korean relations 23; International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 89, 91; Korean War 96–7; North Korea’s nuclear disarmament 4, 20, 23, 25, 47, 87–92, 94, 95–7, 114; Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 89, 91; origins 25, 87–8; unification of Korean peninsula 4, 96–7, 120–1; see also 4PT; 6PT, China’s participation; 6PT institutionalization; 6PT members; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; Northeast Asia 6PT, China’s participation 4, 7, 23, 25, 47, 87, 89–92, 95, 114, 120; host country 4, 11, 20, 52, 89–90, 91, 92, 97, 115; Northeast Asia 87, 96; North Korea 87, 90, 91, 92, 94, 117, 120–1; principal mediator 8, 89–90, 95, 96; see also 6PT 6PT institutionalization 89–92, 93, 96, 114, 115; low level 25, 92, 114; obstacles 92, 94–5, 114; working groups 92, 96; see also 6PT; 6PT, China’s participation

6PT members 47, 114; Japan 8, 11, 47, 89, 94–5, 114; Northeast Asia 96; North Korea 23, 47, 53, 87, 88–97, 114 (withdrawal 91, 92, 95); Russia 8, 23, 47, 89, 94, 120; South Korea 23, 47, 87, 88, 94, 96, 114; United States 8, 11, 23, 47, 53, 88, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 114; see also 6PT; 6PT, China’s participation Afghanistan 59, 60, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 112; Karzai, Hamid 65, 67; narcotics 64; SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group 59, 64; US-military forces 60, 64, 122, 123; see also SCO Africa 2, 14, 105, 121 APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) 2, 5, 27–41, 113–14; aims 28, 29, 32; ASEAN 28, 32, 34, 46; Asian design 28, 32–3, 34–6, 39, 41; Asian Financial Crisis 35–6, 39, 72; economics as main focus 3, 10, 27–9, 31, 33, 38, 41; effectiveness 29, 40, 113; European Union 28, 29; the future of 41; investment liberalization 29, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 86; non-binding principle 10, 32, 34, 36, 38, 55; ‘non-discrimination’ principle 29, 33–4; non-traditional security 3, 10, 37–8, 41; origins 27, 127; principles 29, 32–3, 35, 36, 55; security 3, 10, 17, 23, 29, 37–8, 41, 53; ‘socialization’ of China 3, 41; trade liberalization 27–8, 29–30, 32, 33, 34, 35–6, 38, 39, 40–1, 86, 113; Western/ Asian competitive designs 27–38, 39; Western design 28, 29–31, 39, 41; see also APEC, China’s approaches; APEC institutionalization; APEC members/ membership; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation

160

Index

APEC, China’s approaches 7, 15, 27–41, 55, 113–14; aims 27, 28, 32, 36, 40, 55; ASEAN 32–3, 34; Asian design 28, 32–3, 34–6, 39, 41; benefits 34; China’s role 3, 32–3, 37, 40, 41, 46; China’s turn to other economic groupings 40–1; Collective Action Plans (CAPs) 35; constraining/constrained force 8, 25, 33, 113; economic/security design 36–8; ‘Ecotech’ 35; GATT 27, 33; Individual Action Plans (IAPs) 35; Manila Action Plan 34–5; US hegemony 28; Western/ Chinese competitive designs 31–4; WTO 27, 28, 33, 36; see also APEC; APEC institutionalization; China, economics; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation APEC institutionalization 31, 32, 33, 36, 38–9, 41, 113, 115; APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) 33, 41; Budget and Management Committee (BMC) 31, 38; Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI) 31; EAEG/EAEC 31–2, 39; Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization (EVSL) scheme 35; Eminent Persons’ Group (EPG) 5, 30–1, 33, 36, 39; Osaka Action Agenda 33–4, 39; Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) 27; Seattle Leaders’ Summit 29, 31, 32, 39; see also APEC; APEC, China’s approaches APEC members/membership 27, 32, 35, 39; 127; Australia 27, 28, 29–30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 41, 113, 114, 127; Canada 28, 29, 31, 35, 113, 127; Indonesia 30, 32, 36, 127; Japan 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 41, 113, 114, 127; New Zealand 28, 29, 31, 35, 40, 127; Singapore 30, 32, 38, 39, 40, 127; US 27–8, 29, 32, 33–4, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 113, 114, 127; Western/Asian camps 39; see also APEC; APEC, China’s approaches Arab World 2, 121; Middle East 60, 66, 77, 105, 123; Saudi Arabia 6; see also Iran ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum) 2, 3, 42–54, 72, 111, 113–14; achievement 44; aims 43, 46, 49–50; ASEAN 10, 43, 44–5, 46, 50, 51, 52 (driving force 44, 47, 52); ‘ASEAN Way’ 44, 46, 48, 49; bilateral relations 43, 44, 47, 48, 50, 52; characteristics 43–4, 55;

economic issues15; future developments 53–4; ‘geographical footprint’ 43–4; military 44, 45, 47; mistrust 47, 51; non-binding principle 44, 47, 49, 55; non-intervention principle 48, 49; origins 43, 44–5; security issues 10, 15, 43, 45, 47, 52, 53; shared interests, norms and threats 43, 46–8, 113; socialization 44; socialization of China 4, 10, 49, 50, 124; state sovereignty 48; see also ARF, China’s participation; ARF institutionalization; ARF members/membership; ASEAN; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation ARF, China’s participation 7, 10, 15, 48–52, 55, 62, 111, 113–14; aims 49, 55; ASEAN 49, 50; ‘Asian’ design 41; China's influence 43, 44, 46, 48–9; China's role 3, 42, 47, 48–52; constraining/constrained force 8, 25, 46, 48, 49, 51, 52, 113; East China Sea 48, 51; multipolarity/US hegemony 10, 50; New Security Concept 116; security interest 42, 113; South China Sea disputes 43, 47–8, 50, 51; Southeast Asia 42, 50–2; Spratly Islands 43, 50; see also ARF; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation ARF institutionalization 44–6, 49, 52, 55, 113, 115; ADMM-Plus 53; agenda 45–6, 47, 51; ARF Unit 45; Confidence-building Measures (CBMs) 45, 46, 48, 49; Intersessional Meetings (ISMs) 46, 49, 50, 52, 53; Preventive Diplomacy (PD) 45, 46, 48, 49; underinstitutionalized 10, 46, 49, 113; see also ARF; ARF, China’s participation ARF members/membership 43, 44, 45, 113; Australia 43, 44, 45, 48, 50, 51, 53, 114; Burma 51; Canada 43, 45, 48; East Timor 45, 48; India 50; Japan 11, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51, 53, 114; North Korea 45, 47, 53; Singapore 44, 45, 50, 52, 53; US 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 114; see also ARF; ARF, China’s participation ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) 10, 25; 6PT 8; APEC 28, 32, 34, 46; ARF 10, 43, 44–5, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52; ASEAN Annual Ministerial Meeting (AMM) 21; ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meetings

Index (ADMM) 53; ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) 51, 52, 80, 83; ‘ASEAN Way’ 32, 44, 46, 48, 49, 74, 75, 78, 80, 115; China 15, 20, 21, 32, 49, 50; China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (ACFTA) 4, 21, 22, 40, 76–7, 79–80, 81–2, 83, 84, 85, 112; East Asian Summit (EAS) 77, 78; Japan 36, 81, 82, 85; Mischief Reef incident 15; regional cooperation and integration 36–7; security issues 52; state sovereignty 51; terrorism 85; US 81, 82, 85; see also ARF; ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + China ASEAN + 3 (ASEAN + China, Japan and Korea) 2, 7, 25, 72–8, 86, 111, 113, 122, 125; aim 73, 75; ‘ASEAN Way’ 74, 75; Asian Currency Unit 117; Asian design 39; Asian Financial Crisis 72, 73; currency 72, 73, 74; East Asian Community 74, 77, 86; East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC) 31–2, 39, 72; effectiveness 114; foreign direct investment (FDI) 73; Good Neighbor Policy 74; intra-Asian trade 73, 74, 136; non-binding principle 75; nontraditional security 74, 75–6, 84, 85; origins 31–2, 72; political issues 74, 75, 78, 79, 82, 85; regional identity 72, 73–4, 86, 122; security 74, 75; terrorism 74, 75; trade liberalization 73, 74; trans-national crime 74, 75, 76, 84, 85; US 73–4, 76, 122; see also ASEAN + 3, China’s participation; ASEAN + 3 institutionalization; ASEAN + 3 members/membership; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; Japan; Southeast Asia ASEAN + 3, China’s participation 3–4, 7, 8, 21, 25, 40, 72–8, 111, 112, 115, 122; China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement 4; China-Japan rivalry 76–7, 112; currency 72, 73; economic interests 73; leading role 8, 10, 21, 73, 74, 75; see also ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + 3 institutionalization ASEAN + 3 institutionalization 72–5, 77–8, 83–5, 112, 115; ASEAN + 3 ‘e-government center’ 74; ‘ASEAN + 3 Cooperation Work Plan 2007–2017’ 75; Asian Bond Market/Asian Bond Fund 74–5; Chiang Mai Initiative 73, 74, 83, 122; East Asian Summit (EAS) 72, 77,

161

83, 86, 114; East Asian Vision Group 74; Network of East Asia Think-Tanks (NEAT) 74; obstacles 75–8; see also ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + 3, China’s participation ASEAN + 3 members/membership 114; ASEAN countries 31, 72; East Asia 72, 73–4; Japan 10, 21, 74, 76, 77, 82, 86, 112, 122; Malaysia 31, 72, 75; Northeast Asia 72–5; South Korea 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 122; Southeast Asia 4, 25, 72–5, 76; see also ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + 3, China’s participation ASEAN + China 2, 25, 40, 78–86, 115, 121, 125; ‘ASEAN Way’ 78, 80; areas for cooperation 80; Asian Financial Crisis 78; China’s participation 3–4, 7, 21, 25, 52, 72–86 (leading role 8, 78, 82); economic interests 10; effectiveness 114; energy 80, 81; Good Neighbor Policy 20; infrastructure development 80, 81; intra-Asian trade 78–82; Japan 82; Myanmar 79; origins 78–9; South China Sea disputes 4, 79, 86, 113, 119; Southeast Asia 4, 78, 80, 81, 82, 86, 115; see also ASEAN + China institutionalization; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; Southeast Asia ASEAN + China institutionalization 78–86, 112, 115; ASEAN-China dialogue mechanisms 79; ASEANChina Joint Cooperation Committee (ACJCC) 79; China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (ACFTA) 4, 21, 22, 40, 76–7, 79–80, 81–2, 83, 84, 85, 112; Declaration on Conduct (DOC) 79; Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) 21, 80, 83; Joint Declaration on Cooperation in the Field of Non-traditional Security Issues 79, 80; Memorandum of Understanding on Agricultural Cooperation 79, 80; middle level 25, 112; see also ASEAN + China Asia-Pacific region 1, 3, 31, 33; AsiaPacific integration 8; Asian Currency Unit 117, 122; China 6, 15, 19, 28, 40, 49; features 33; Good Neighbor Policy 19; multipolarity 18–19; regional security instability 43; security 4, 42, 43, 47; trade 20, 31; United States 29, 40; see also APEC; ARF; ASEAN

162

Index

Asian Development Bank 23, 80, 81 Asian Financial Crisis (1997) 17, 20, 72; APEC 35–6, 39, 72; ARF 72; ASEAN + 3 72, 73; ASEAN + China 78; China 20; currency 72, 73; International Monetary Fund (IMF) 36; Japan 36, 76; World Bank 36 Australia 19, 98, 123; APEC 27, 28, 29–30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 41, 113, 114, 127; ARF 43, 44, 45, 48, 50, 51, 53, 114; ‘Four States Alliance’ 122, 123; Keating, Paul 44; military 48, 53–4, 106–7; Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) 99, 100, 101, 106–7, 109, 110, 115; Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) 107, 109; see also APEC; ARF; Pacific Island Countries (PICs) Brunei 15, 44, 45, 52, 127 Burma/Myanmar 13, 14, 23, 121; Aung San Suu Kyi 82; China 21, 51, 73, 79, 81, 85, 121; see also ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + China; Southeast Asia Cambodia 15, 21; China 73, 79, 80–1, 121; see also ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + China; Southeast Asia Canada: APEC 28, 29, 31, 35, 113, 127; ARF 43, 45, 48; see also APEC; ARF Central Asia 1, 3; boundary issues 22; China 56, 58, 60, 61, 62, 66, 68, 70, 117, 120; Chinese regional power 2; Good Neighbor Policy 13, 22–3; non-interference 19; Russia 58, 60, 67, 71, 120; SCO 3, 25, 42, 55, 58, 59, 60, 65, 71, 120; state sovereignty 19; trade 20; US 59–60; see also Russia; SCO China: communist/authoritarian regime 11, 53, 62, 85, 110, 112, 115, 119; Deng Xiaoping 14–15, 16, 17; hegemony 50, 52, 117; Hu Jintao 7, 13, 19, 61–2, 66, 81, 83, 90, 91 (‘Harmonious World’ 19, 22, 121); Hu-Wen 25; Jiang Zemin 6, 7, 16, 21, 32, 61, 83; Li Peng 16; Mao Zedong 13, 14; People’s Republic of China (PRC), foundation 12, 13; population 7; rising power 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 13, 17, 18, 39, 49, 50, 69, 73, 117, 119, 123 (peaceful rise 18–19, 49, 98); Tiananmen Incident (1989) 6, 14, 15,

30, 49; Wen Jiabao 13, 20, 74, 78, 80, 83, 96, 101, 102, 109; Zhu Rongji 7, 21, 83; see also other China’s entries, names of specific countries, and organizations China, economics 14, 17, 18, 20, 37, 119, 121; Africa 105, 121; China as regional power 2, 3, 20, 75; CPIC 101–2, 107, 108; currency 72, 73; developing country 34, 105; economic embargo 14; economic growth 14, 73, 98, 100, 117, 119; foreign trade 5, 14, 20, 21, 30; free trade agreement (FTA) 76, 81, 82, 113; gross domestic product (GDP) 5, 119; institutionalization of multilateral cooperation 1, 2, 7, 10, 15, 18, 25, 26, 73, 107–8, 111; intra-Asian trade 73, 74, 96, 136; investment 20, 21, 30, 66, 73, 107, 121 (second largest foreign direct investment (FDI) 5); model for economic development 20; natural resources 4, 102, 107, 109, 121, 122; open-door policy 5, 14, 20–1, 73, 100; SCO 61–2, 69, 70; second largest economy 119; trade liberalization 27, 32, 34, 36, 40, 85; WTO 27, 28, 33, 36; see also APEC, China’s approaches; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; CPIC; SCO China, energy 3, 18, 22, 80, 81, 118, 120, 121, 123; ASEAN + China 80, 81; China-Japan rivalry 77; Kazakhstan 120; Russia 66, 67, 71, 77, 120; SCO 60, 61, 62, 66–7, 69, 70, 71; Southeast Asia 22; see also energy; SCO China, foreign policy 4–5, 6, 8, 11–12, 15, 40, 61, 82, 115, 118; anti-hegemonism 10, 14, 28, 50, 58, 60, 70, 112; Arab World 2, 121; bilateral relationships 1, 2, 6, 10, 17, 18, 121; boundary disputes 21, 49, 55, 56, 119; containment policy against 6, 9, 15, 17, 49, 51, 121, 122, 123; diplomacy 1, 2, 17, 18, 116, 118, 119; European Union 2; ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence’ 13, 17, 18, 19, 22, 48, 80, 115; isolation 6, 14, 30, 111; non-aggression 13, 80, 87; noninterference 1, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 24, 37, 48, 62, 86, 87, 110, 115, 117, 122; multipolarity 14–17, 18–19, 20, 24, 40, 116; soft power 98, 117; state sovereignty 1, 6, 7, 13, 16, 19, 24, 32, 37, 48, 58, 87, 110, 112, 117, 122;

Index threat perceptions of China 9, 10, 15, 18, 40, 42, 49, 50, 85–6, 116, 117, 118 (China Threat Theory 15); United Nations 18, 108, 122, 144; see also other China’s entries, names of specific countries, and organizations; Good Neighbor Policy China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation 5–8, 18, 20, 62, 86, 112, 116–17, 123; aims 4, 11–12, 116; appraisal 111–18; benefits 11, 34, 111, 115; constraining/constrained force 8, 11, 25, 33, 46, 48, 49, 51, 52, 113; costs 4, 11, 115; disposition toward Chinese lead 1, 2, 9, 10, 25, 61, 78, 112, 117, 118; economical motivations 1, 2, 7, 10, 15, 18, 25, 26, 73, 107–8, 111; from state sovereignty/non-interference to multilateralism 1, 2, 3, 4, 6–7, 10, 116; importance 8–12; leading role 8, 10–11, 21, 24, 41, 42, 52, 56, 60, 61, 62, 64, 73, 74, 75, 78, 82, 86, 98, 101–2, 112, 113, 115, 117; limitations 117; main initiator 1, 2, 4, 7, 56, 61, 98, 100–1; membership size/effectiveness 3, 25, 114; political motivations 1, 2, 7, 10, 25, 74, 105–6; power politics 1, 2, 9, 25, 52, 111, 118; preference for economic/security forums 26, 114, 115; responsible great power 7, 18, 37, 73, 75, 87, 90, 105, 120; security motivations 1, 2, 7, 10, 15, 18, 25, 26, 42, 74, 106–7, 111, 114; shaping the rules 4, 41, 61, 116, 117; shared interests 1, 2, 9, 25, 58–60, 68, 111, 112, 113, 118; ‘socialization’ of China 3, 4, 10, 41, 49, 50, 124; success 2, 9–10; see also 6PT; APEC; ARF; ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + China; CPIC; Good Neighbor Policy; institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; multilateral organization; SCO China, military 17, 18, 117, 119; ARF 43, 47, 51; island chains 106, 143; military assistance 81 106, 109; military exercises 51, 86; military expenditure 106; military integration 19–20; navy 86, 106; ‘Peace Mission 2005’ 68; ‘Peace Mission 2007’ 67–9; ‘Peace Mission 2009’ 69; People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 67, 79, 86, 109; Russian arms sales to China 70, 106; troops in neighboring/foreign countries 17, 118;

163

weapons 70, 81, 106, 119; see also China, security; SCO China, politics 3; Hong Kong 30, 37; institutionalization of multilateral cooperation 1, 2, 7, 10, 25, 74, 105–6; non-interference 1, 4, 5; sovereignty claims over Taiwan 1, 4, 7, 26, 30, 37, 48, 49, 62, 69, 78, 101, 109, 123; state sovereignty 1, 3, 4, 5; see also China, foreign policy; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation China, regional cooperation and integration 1, 2, 16, 19–20, 75, 86; approaches to regional multilateralism 23–6; Asia-Pacific integration 8; Chinese regional power 2; economic issues 2, 19, 24; future trends 118–23; multipolarity 14–17, 18–19, 20, 24, 40, 116; open membership 24; prioritizing regionalism and internationalism 17–18; quasi-alliance building 5; regional governmental organizations 2, 24; security issues 2, 19–20, 24; World Trade Organization 24; see also APEC; ARF; ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + China; China, foreign policy; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; CPIC; Good Neighbor Policy; institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; SCO China, security 2, 3, 4, 11, 19–20, 24, 117, 119; China as regional power 2, 3; institutionalization of multilateral cooperation 1, 2, 7, 10, 15, 18, 25, 26, 42, 74, 106–7, 111, 114; interrelated nature 17; New Security Concept 7, 17, 18, 116; non-traditional security 3, 10, 17, 23, 37–8, 41, 59, 64, 68, 69, 74, 75–6, 79, 80, 118; SCO 10, 42, 55, 56, 61, 68, 69–70; see also China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; China, military; non-traditional security; security; terrorism Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 13, 14, 119; Fourteenth CCP Congress 15, 17; Fifteenth CCP Congress 16, 17; Sixteenth CCP Congress 17, 18, 19; Seventeenth CCP Congress 16, 17, 18; Eighteenth CCP Congress 118; Nineteenth CCP Congress 118; see also other China’s entries

164

Index

CPIC (China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum) 2, 4, 25, 98–110, 114–15; aid 4, 11, 100, 101–2, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 115, 144; aims 105–8; China-Japan rivalry 98–9, 102, 103, 106–7, 108, 109, 114; China-PICs relations 100–10; different modus operandi 98; distinction as foreign policy approach 98; economics 101–2, 107, 108; future of China’s Pacific islands diplomacy 108–10; initiator 98, 100–1; institutionalization 25, 101–2, 108, 114; Investment, Trade and Tourism Ministerial Conference of the CPIC Forum 108–9; leading role 8, 52, 98, 101–2; military 106, 109; ‘One China Policy’ 101, 105; security 106–7; Taiwan 99, 100, 101, 105–6, 109, 110, 114, 115; United Nations 108, 114, 144; see also Pacific Island Countries (PICs) CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) 69, 120, 136 democracy 14, 19, 29, 119; APEC 29; China 49, 60, 109, 121; democratic accountability 109, 121; ‘Greater Asia’ partnership of democracies 122; Pacific Islands 109, 110; SCO 60; Southeast Asia 50, 121; see also United States developing country 14, 80; Africa 105; APEC 32, 34, 35, 38, 129; China 34, 105; Latin America 105; Middle East 105 East Asia 72; ASEAN + 3 72, 73–4; China 122; East Asian Community 74, 77, 86, 122; East Asian Summit (EAS) 72, 77, 83, 86, 114; East Asian Vision Group 74; regional identity 72, 73–4, 86, 122; see also ASEAN; ASEAN + 3 East Asia-Western Pacific region 1; China 52, 86; security 6, 43; trade 23, 117; United States 5, 6, 23 East China Sea 50, 51, 77, 119 economics 73, 74, 96, 117; bilateral trade agreements 40–1, 117; free trade agreement (FTA) 40, 76, 81, 82, 112–13; intra-Asian trade 73, 74, 78–82, 96, 136; investment liberalization 29,

33, 34, 35, 38, 39; regional cooperation, market-driven 73; SCO, economic cooperation 56, 59, 60, 61, 64, 69; SCO Free Trade Area 62, 69; SCO trade, investment 3, 22, 56, 59, 60, 61; trade liberalization 27–8, 29–30, 32, 33, 34, 35–6, 38, 39, 40–1, 73, 74, 117; see also APEC; China, economics; CPIC; regional cooperation; SCO energy 23; East Asian Summit (EAS) 77; India 122–3; Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO) 88; Middle East 60, 66, 77, 123; North Korea 90, 91, 92, 94; Russia 60, 66, 67, 71, 77, 120; SCO 3, 22, 59, 60, 61, 64, 66–7, 69, 70, 112; see also China, energy environmental protection 41, 50, 75, 84, 100; East Asian Summit (EAS) 77, 78; environmental degradation 17, 37–8; see also non-traditional security Eurasia 3, 55, 61, 69, 70, 118 European Union 2, 8, 21, 111–12; APEC 28, 29; as model of regional integration 8, 111–12; Euro 117; institutionbuilding 111; SCO 65, 67, 68 GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) 27, 33 Good Neighbor Policy 1, 7, 11, 13–26, 74, 117, 123; Central/South Asia 13, 22–3; China’s approaches to regional multilateralism 23–6; ‘common development’ enterprise 20–1; ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence’ 13, 17, 18, 19, 22, 48, 80, 115; interests and influence in Asia-Pacific region 19; multipolarity 14–17, 18; New International Order 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 118 (democratization of international relations 16–17); New International Order + New Security Concept: ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence’ 17; Northeast Asia 13, 23; origin and development 13–14; ‘Peaceful Rise/Peaceful Development’ thesis 18–19; prioritizing regionalism and internationalism 17–18; regional integration 19–20; Southeast Asia 13, 15, 21–2; see also China, foreign policy; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; China, security

Index Hong Kong 30, 32, 37, 74, 75 human rights 121; China 24, 49, 50, 51, 60, 121; Pacific Islands 109–10; SCO 58, 60; Shanghai Five 58 India 13, 70, 122; APEC 39; ARF 50; China-India relation 5, 20, 119, 122–3; ‘Four States Alliance’ 122, 123; Japan-India relation 122–3; military cooperation 53–4, 70; nuclear program 48; SCO 22–3, 56, 60, 62, 65, 70, 114; Tibet 119; Vajpayee, Atel Bihari 119 Indian Ocean 51, 52, 54, 123 Indonesia 6, 14, 15; APEC 30, 32, 36, 127; Asian Financial Crisis 36; Suharto 32; see also ASEAN institutionalization of multilateral cooperation 1, 8–12, 112; 6PT 25, 89–92, 93, 94–5, 96, 114, 115; APEC 31, 32, 33, 36, 38–9, 41, 113, 115; ARF 10, 44–6, 49, 52, 113, 115; ASEAN + 3 72–8, 83–5, 112, 115; ASEAN + China 25, 78–86, 112, 115; CPIC 25, 101–2, 108; definition 9; effects on East Asia/ Western Pacific 4; importance 8–12; institutionalization 9, 11, 24, 111; measuring political institutionalization 9, 11, 24, 25; purpose 111; SCO 10, 25, 55, 56–8, 60–1, 62, 63, 66, 70–1, 112, 114, 115; Shanghai Five 63; see also 6PT; APEC; ARF; ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + China; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; CPIC; multilateral organization; SCO International Monetary Fund (IMF) 36, 72, 76 international relations 103; ARF bilateral relations 43, 44, 47, 48, 50, 52; Asia 5; China 3, 32, 116, 118–23; Chinese bilateral relationships 1, 2, 6, 10, 17, 18, 121; democratization of international relations 16–17; multipolarity 16; state sovereignty 32, 33; see also China, foreign policy; China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; institutionalization of multilateral cooperation Iran 68; Ahmadinejad 66; China-Iran relations 62; nuclear weapons program 23, 60, 62, 65; SCO 56, 60, 62, 65, 114; see also Arab World

165

Japan 5, 98; 6PT 8, 11, 47, 89, 94–5, 114; abduction of Japanese citizens to North Korea 94; APEC 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 41, 113, 114, 127; ARF 11, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51, 53, 114; ASEAN 36, 76, 81, 82; ASEAN + 3 10, 11, 21, 74, 76, 77, 82, 86, 112, 122; Asian Financial Crisis 36, 76; Asia-Pacific integration 8, 76; Aso Taro 78, 103; East Asian Summit (EAS) 77; ‘Four States Alliance’ 122, 123; Hashimoto Ryutaro 21; Hatoyama Yukio 78, 122; Koizumi Junichiro 77, 78; nationalism 98, 103; New Miyazawa Initiative 76; SCO 11, 70; Shinzo Abe 122; Southeast Asia 15, 76, 77, 122; United Nations 108, 122; US 76, 77, 86; see also ASEAN + 3; Japan-China relations; Japan, economics; JapanPacific Island Countries; Japan, security/ military Japan-China relations 6, 7, 10, 15, 36, 47, 51, 77, 86, 94–5, 119, 122; ASEAN + China 82; boycott to China 6, 15; China-Japan rivalry 49, 51, 76–7, 81, 98–9, 102, 103, 106–7, 108, 109, 112, 114; containment of China 15, 51, 122; East China Sea 50, 51, 77, 119; Spratly Islands 15, 43, 50, 79, 86; see also Japan Japan, economics 11, 21, 35, 36, 76, 82; economic recession 20, 76; foreign direct investment (FDI) 76, 82; free trade agreement (FTA) 40; intra-Asian trade 73; revaluation of Japanese Yen 76; see also ASEAN + 3; Japan Japan-Pacific Island Countries 11, 99, 100, 101, 102, 106–7, 108, 114; aid 100, 103, 107, 108, 109, 115; motives for engaging the PICs 103; see also Japan; Pacific Island Countries (PICs) Japan, security/military: military 11, 53, 95; military cooperation 53–4, 106–7; security 15, 95; US-Japan Alliance 50, 95; see also Japan Kazakhstan 120; Nazarbayev, Nursultan 66; SCO 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 66, 67, 70; see also SCO Kyrgyzstan: Akayev, Askar 59, 60; Atambayev, Almazbek 66; China 118–19; SCO 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68; US military bases 60, 68; see also SCO

166

Index

Laos 21, 73, 79, 80, 81, 121; see also ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + China; Southeast Asia Latin America 2, 105, 121 Malaysia 21; APEC 33; ASEAN + 3 31, 72, 75; Mahathir Mohammed 72, 75; Spratly Islands 15; see also ASEAN; ASEAN + 3 Middle East 60, 66, 77, 105, 123; see also Arab World; Iran military issues: ARF 44, 45, 47; military cooperation 19–20, 53–4, 70, 106–7; military pre-emption 18; SCO 55, 58, 61, 62, 64, 67–9, 71; Shanghai Five 55; Singapore 53–4; see also China, military; nuclear weapons; security; US military Mongolia 56, 60, 62, 65, 114; see also SCO Most Favoured Nation (MFN) 33 multilateral organization 9–11; aims 9, 11; definition 9, 24; institutionalization 9, 24, 25; membership size/ effectiveness 3, 25, 114–15; regional security organization 42–3; see also institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; regional cooperation and integration New Zealand: APEC 28, 29, 31, 35, 40, 127; Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) 99, 100, 106, 109, 110, 115 non-traditional security 3, 10, 17, 23, 37–8, 41, 59; APEC 37–8, 41; ASEAN + 3 74, 75–6, 84, 85; China 3, 10, 17, 23, 37–8, 41, 59, 64, 68, 69, 74, 75–6, 79, 80, 118; drug trafficking 64, 68, 69, 76, 80, 112; environmental degradation 17, 37–8; food contamination 37; illegal immigration 59, 76; infectious diseases 17, 80, 100; mercenary activities 59; money laundering 10, 75, 76, 80, 91; piracy 51, 75, 76, 118; SCO 59, 64, 68, 69; smuggling 56, 59, 64, 75, 76, 80, 118; trans-national crime 17, 59, 68, 69, 74, 75, 76, 84, 85; see also security; terrorism North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 58, 60, 64, 70; see also SCO North Korea: 4PT 88–9, 97; 6PT 23, 47, 53, 87, 88–97, 114 (withdrawal 91, 92, 95); aid to 87, 88–9, 90, 91, 94, 95; ARF 45, 47, 53; China 87, 90, 91, 92,

94, 117, 120–1; Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) 87–9, 90, 94, 95, 97; energy 90, 91, 92, 94; interKorean relations 23, 43; International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 89, 91, 92; Kim Il Sung 88; Kim Jong Il 88, 90, 91, 94, 96; Korean War 87, 88, 90, 96–7; military 89; nationalism 92; nuclear disarmament 4, 20, 23, 25, 37, 47, 53, 78, 87–92, 94, 95–7, 114, 120, 121; Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 89, 91; Pakistan 94; trade 87, 91; unification of Korean peninsula 4, 96–7, 120–1; UN Security Council 89, 91, 92, 95; US 87, 88–9, 92, 94, 95, 96; see also 4PT; 6PT Northeast Asia 3; 6PT 96; alternative security arrangements 95–8; ASEAN + 3 72–5; China 2, 23, 87, 96, 120; economic cooperation 96; Good Neighbor Policy 13, 23; institutionalization of multilateral cooperation1, 23; Japan 23; North Korea’s nuclear disarmament 23; Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD) 23, 97; South Korea 23; traditional/non-traditional security 23; see also 6PT; ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + China; Japan; North Korea; South Korea nuclear weapons 68; ARF 37, 48, 53; Indian nuclear program 48; International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 89, 91; Iran 23, 60, 62, 65; North Korea nuclear disarmament 4, 20, 23, 25, 37, 47, 53, 78, 87–92, 94, 95–7, 114, 120, 121; Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) 89, 91; Pakistan 94; Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ) 50–1; theater missile defense (TMD) 61, 95, 120; US 61, 69, 89, 120, 144; see also military issues; security Oceania 2, 3, 43, 44, 96, 98, 102; see also CPIC Pacific Island Countries (PICs) 98–110, 114–15; aid 98, 99, 100, 101–2, 103, 105–6, 107, 108, 109–10, 115; Australia 99, 100, 101, 106–7, 109, 110, 115; development cooperation 99–100, 101; economic cooperation 98, 99, 101–2,

Index 108, 109; fisheries/other resources 4, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 105, 107, 109; Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 99; Japan-PIF 11, 99, 100, 101, 102, 106–7, 108, 115; Japan’s motives for engaging the PICs 103; New Zealand 99, 100, 106, 109, 110, 115; Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) 99–100, 104, 108, 109, 110; population 109; South Pacific Forum (SPF) 99; security 99, 106–7; tourism 98, 99, 102, 107; US 106, 108, 109, 110, 114, 115, 144; see also CPIC Pakistan 45; China-Pakistan relations 62; nuclear weapons 94; SCO 22–3, 56, 60, 62, 64, 65, 114 Philippines 14, 22, 34, 40, 123; Spratly Islands 15, 86; see also ASEAN; Southeast Asia regional cooperation and integration 1; APEC, divergent approaches 27–38; ASEAN 36–7; Asia-Pacific integration 8; Asian regionalism 115; China 1, 8, 36–7, 40, 96; development cooperation 24, 99–100, 101; East Asian Community 74, 77, 86, 122; East Asian regionalism 10, 86; economics 73, 74, 96, 98, 99, 101–2, 108, 109, 117; intra-Asian trade 73, 74, 78–82, 96, 136; marketdriven 73; Northeast Asia, economic cooperation 96; Pacific Islands (development cooperation 99–100, 101; economic cooperation 98, 99, 101–2, 108, 109); principles 36–7; regional identity 72, 73–4, 86, 122; regional security organization 42–3, 55–6, 57; SCO: model of economic and security cooperation 22; security issues 24, 97; see also APEC; ARF; SCO Russia 3; 6PT 8, 23, 47, 89, 94; arms sales to China 70, 106; boundary disputes 56, 119; Central Asia 58, 60, 67, 71; Chechnya 55, 68; China-Russia relations 5, 6, 22, 23, 55, 64–9, 71, 112, 120; China-Russia rivalry 69; Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) 69, 120; energy 60, 66, 67, 71, 77, 120; Good Neighbor Policy 13, 22–3; ‘Peace Mission 2005’ 68; ‘Peace Mission 2007’ 67–9; ‘Peace Mission 2009’ 69; Putin, Vladimir 64, 68, 69, 119; SCO 3, 10, 11, 42, 55, 56–7, 58, 60, 62, 65, 66, 67–9, 70, 71; state sovereignty 58; US

167

hegemony 58, 60, 69, 70; weapons 70; see also Central Asia; SCO SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) 2, 20, 55–71, 111; Afghanistan 59, 60, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 112; aims 55, 56, 57, 59, 68, 69–70, 112; anti-US feelings 59–60; Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) 69, 136; economic cooperation 56, 59, 60, 61, 64, 69; energy cooperation 3, 22, 59, 60, 61, 64, 66–7, 69, 70, 112; Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEc) 69, 136; future developments 69–71; infrastructure development 56, 59, 61–2, 66; Japan 11, 70; model of economic and security cooperation 22; origins 17–18, 25, 55–6, 57, 127; SCO Free Trade Area 62, 69; ‘Shanghai Spirit’ 22, 115; shared interests, norms and threats 58–60, 68, 112, 113; trade/ investment 3, 22, 56, 59, 60, 61, 112; US 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 112; see also China, institutionalization of multilateral cooperation; military issues; SCO, China’s participation; SCO institutionalization; SCO members/ membership; SCO, security/military; Shanghai Five SCO, China’s participation 7, 20, 25, 40, 60–3, 69, 70, 111, 113, 114, 115; aim 56, 58, 60, 120; budgeting 11, 61–2, 115; Central Asia 56, 58, 60, 61, 62, 66, 68, 70, 117, 120; China-Russia relations 64–9, 71, 112; China’s roles 60–3, 112; economic cooperation 61–2, 69, 70; energy interests 61, 62, 66–7, 69, 70, 71; Good Neighbor Policy 20, 22–3; initiator 2, 56, 61; leading role 8, 10, 42, 52, 56, 60, 61, 62, 64, 113; SCO Free Trade Area 62, 69; security interests 10, 42, 55, 56, 61, 68, 69–70; separatism 56, 61, 68; ‘three evils’ 61; US hegemony 58, 60, 70, 112; Xinjiang 55, 56, 59, 62, 67, 68; see also other SCO’s entries SCO institutionalization 55, 56–8, 60–1, 62, 63, 65–6, 70–1, 112, 114, 115; Charter 57, 58, 65, 71; Council of National Coordinators 57, 58; Dushanbe Declaration 57, 58; high level 10, 25; regional anti-terrorist center 56, 61; Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) 57–8, 63; ‘Regulations on Observer Status at the Shanghai

168

Index

Cooperation Organization’ 65–6; SCOAfghanistan Contact Group 59, 64; Secretariat 56, 57–8, 59, 61, 63; Seventh Summit 64–9; ‘Shanghai Convention against Terrorism, Separatism and (Religious) Extremism’ 57; see also other SCO’s entries SCO members/membership 55–6, 58, 64, 65–6, 114; Central Asia 3, 25, 42, 55, 58, 59, 60, 65, 71, 120; India 22–3, 56, 60, 62, 65, 70, 114; Iran 56, 60, 62, 65, 66, 114; Kazakhstan 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 66, 67, 70; Kyrgyzstan 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68; Mongolia 56, 60, 62, 65, 114; Pakistan 22–3, 56, 60, 62, 64, 65, 114; Russia 3, 10, 11, 42, 55, 56–7, 58, 60, 62, 65, 66, 67–9, 70, 71, 112; Tajikistan 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 64, 67; Uzbekistan 55–6, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 114; see also other SCO’s entries SCO, security/military 58, 62, 64, 67–9; anti-terrorist exercises 56, 61, 67–9; Islamic extremism 3, 42, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 68, 70; military alliance 58, 69; military exercises 55, 58, 67–9; non-traditional security 59, 64, 68, 69; North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 58, 60, 64, 70; ‘Peace Mission 2005’ 68; ‘Peace Mission 2007’ 67–9; ‘Peace Mission 2009’ 69; quasi-military bloc 56, 58, 61, 71; regional security organization 42–3, 55–6, 57; security cooperation 10, 55, 56, 58, 59, 67–70; separatism 3, 42, 55, 56, 57, 59, 68; terrorism 3, 20, 22, 42, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 65, 68, 69, 112; see also other SCO’s entries security 117; APEC 3, 10, 17, 23, 29, 37–8, 41; ARF 10, 15, 43, 45, 47, 52, 53 (mistrust 47, 51); ASEAN + 3 74, 75; Chinese regional power 2; Islamic extremism 3, 42, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 68, 70 (East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) 59, 68; Hizb-ut-Tahrir 59); Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) 95; regional security organization 42–3; SCO 10, 55, 56, 58, 59, 67–70; separatism 3, 42, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 68; ‘three evils’ 57, 59, 61; see also China, security; non-traditional security; nuclear weapons; SCO, security/ military; terrorism

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) 39, 83, 84, 85 Shanghai Five 22, 25, 55, 56–7, 59, 127; ‘Agreement on Mutual Reduction of Military Forces’ 57; border disputes 55, 56–7; China’s participation 2, 52, 56, 61, 115; institutionalization 63; military 55; norms 58; Shanghai Five Council of National Coordinators 57; ‘Shanghai Spirit’ 22, 115; ‘three evils’ 57, 59; see also SCO Singapore 6, 15; APEC 30, 32, 38, 39, 40, 127; ARF 44, 45, 50, 52, 53; free trade agreement (FTA) 40; Lee Kuan Yew 15; military cooperation 53–4; see also ASEAN South Asia 14; Chinese regional power 2; Good Neighbor Policy 13, 22–3; South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) 22–3; see also SCO Southeast Asia 1, 3, 19, 30; ASEAN + 3 4, 25, 72–5, 76; ASEAN + China 4, 78, 80, 81, 82, 86, 115; China 42, 47, 50–2, 85–6, 117, 121 (tariffs reduction 11, 80, 115); Chinese regional power 2, 121; democracy 50, 121; Good Neighbor Policy 13, 15, 21–2; Japan 15, 76, 77, 122; Mischief Reef incident 15, 16, 50, 51, 79; SCO 22–3; South China Sea disputes 4, 15, 21–2, 43, 47–8, 50, 51, 79, 86, 119 (ASEAN + China 4, 79, 86, 113, 119; Declaration on Conduct (DOC) 79); Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ) 50–1; Spratly Islands 15, 43, 50, 79, 86; Taiwan 21; US 82, 85, 123; see also ARF; ASEAN; ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + China; Burma/Myanmar; Cambodia; Laos; SCO; Vietnam South Korea 6, 36; 4PT 88, 89; 6PT 23, 47, 87, 88, 94, 96, 114; APEC 33; ASEAN + 3 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 122; China-South Korea relations 7, 15, 87, 95, 117; inter-Korean relations 23, 43; Kim Dae-jung 73; Kim Young Sam 88; Korean War 87, 88, 90, 96–7; Lee Myung-bak 78, 94, 95; Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) 95; Roh Moo-hyun 94, 96; unification of Korean peninsula 4, 96–7, 120–1; US-South Korea alliance 95, 97, 121 (military presence in South Korea 88, 97, 121); see also 6PT; ASEAN + 3

Index Taiwan 6, 47; APEC 30; ASEAN 85; Chen Shui-bian 105; China's military exercises 51; China's sovereignty claims over Taiwan 1, 4, 7, 26, 30, 37, 48, 49, 62, 69, 78, 101, 109, 123; China/Taiwan competition to secure diplomatic recognition 105–6; CPIC 99, 100, 101, 105–6, 109, 110, 114, 115; Ma Yingjeou 123; Southeast Asia 21; Spratly Islands 15, 43, 50, 79, 86; United Nations 108; US arms sales to 58, 95, 123; see also CPIC Tajikistan 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 64, 67; Afghanistan 64; see also SCO terrorism 18, 37, 118–19; 9–11 attacks 3, 10, 37, 48, 56, 61, 89, 123; APEC 3, 10 (‘APEC Leaders’ Statement on CounterTerrorism’ 37; Counter-Terrorism Task Force 37); ASEAN 85; ASEAN + 3 74, 75; China 17, 118–19, 123; Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) 95; SCO 3, 20, 22, 42, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 65, 67–9, 112; war on 48; see also Afghanistan; non-traditional security; SCO, security/ military; security; US military Thailand 14, 21, 123; APEC 33; Asian Financial Crisis 36; China 81; Samak Sundaravej 81; see also ASEAN United Nations: China 18, 108, 122, 144; Japan 108, 122; peacekeeping 15, 17, 46, 48, 95, 109; regional organization 42; Taiwan 108; UN Charter 16, 18, 42; UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 107; UN Register of Conventional Arms 46; UN Security Council 11, 60, 62, 77, 89, 91, 122 United States (US) 5, 14, 19, 21, 81, 98; 4PT 88–9; 6PT 8, 11, 23, 47, 53, 88, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 114; 9–11 attacks 3, 10, 37, 48, 56, 61, 89, 123; anti-US feelings 59–60; ARF 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 114; ASEAN 81, 82, 85; ASEAN + 3 73–4, 76, 122; Bush, George, Jr. 89, 90, 95, 123; Bush, George, Sr. 14; Clinton, Bill 7, 29, 32, 34, 43, 88; energy 70; foreign policy 70; ‘Four States Alliance’ 122, 123; hegemony 6, 10, 15, 16, 17, 20, 28, 49, 50, 58, 60, 70, 74, 112, 115, 116, 120; multilateralism 10, 116; ‘New World Order’ 14; North Korea 87, 88–9, 92, 94, 95, 96; Obama, Barack 123; Pacific

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Island Countries (PICs) 106, 108, 109, 110, 114, 144; US-South Korea alliance 95, 97, 121; see also other US’s entries US-China relations 2, 6–7, 10, 17, 40, 50, 69, 95, 119; containment of China 6, 15, 17, 49, 51, 121, 123; primus inter pares 120; USA-China G-2 120; see also United States; China US economics: APEC 27–8, 29, 32, 33–4, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 113, 114, 127; free trade agreement (FTA) 40; protectionism 28, 31, 50; world recession 2008–2009 21, 123; see also APEC US military 17, 43, 47, 70; Afghanistan 60, 64, 122, 123; arms sales to Taiwan 58, 95, 123; ‘axis of evil’ 89; Central Asia 56, 60, 61, 68, 70, 123; Guam 108, 144; Iraq 123; Kyrgyzstan 60, 68; military bases 60, 68, 144; military cooperation 53–4; nuclear weapons 61, 69, 89, 120, 144; South Korea 88, 97, 121; Southeast Asia 82, 85, 123; Uzbekistan 60; see also security; US security US security 37, 43, 48; SCO 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71; terrorism 37, 48; US-Japan Alliance 50; see also security; US military Uzbekistan 55–6, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67; Afghanistan 64; Andijan riots 59, 60, 61; East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) 59, 68; Karimov, Ismail 59, 61; US military bases 60; see also SCO Vietnam 15, 22, 86; APEC 35, 37; ASEAN 21; China 21, 73, 79, 80, 81, 117, 119, 121; Spratly Islands 15, 86; see also ASEAN + 3; ASEAN + China; Southeast Asia the West 19, 65, 70, 72; Asian challenge to 5; boycott to China 6; see also United States Western Pacific region 3, 4, 51, 111, 118, 120 World Bank 36, 81 world recession 2008–2009 21, 119, 123 WTO (World Trade Organization) 24, 34, 82, 114; China 27, 28, 33, 36; free trade 24, 40, 86; WTO’s Doha Round 40, 41