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Executive Summary

Since the 1980s, the Asia-Pacific region has achieved rapid regional economic development while maintaining peace and stability. China’s view on the stability of the Asia-Pacific region is informed by three assumptions: China’s development needs regional stability and benefits from it; China is a contributor to regional stability; regional stability faces multiple challenges. Based on an assessment of official discourse, this report contends that the Chinese government’s view is that “regional stability” is maintained as long as there are no large-scale military conflicts in the region, the sovereign independence and territorial integrity of the regional countries are respected, the right of all countries to choose their own political systems and paths of development is respected, and the international order centered on the United Nations is respected.

In the Chinese view, there are currently multiple challenges to several of these conditions of regional stability: the US strategy of great power competition to contain China’s development; a negative and mutually reinforcing assessment of the security environment by regional powers; lingering non-traditional security challenges. To understand how China seeks to address these regional challenges to stability, this report explores China’s policies towards the Asia-Pacific from four different dimensions: its response to regional hotspot issues; views on the construction of regional order; attitude towards the construction of regional security mechanisms; and policy of providing public security goods for the region.

Chinese academics are observing a number of concerning changes that are restructuring the regional order, some more successful than others. First, countries are reinforcing their military power in an attempt to enhance their self-protection capabilities, and the beginnings of an arms race in the region are already evident. Second, the United States is pursuing a policy of “decoupling and breaking the supply chain” with China, and US regional allies and partners are also seeking to “de-sinicise” their economies on the grounds of “economic security” to build an economic order in the Asia-Pacific that excludes China from important issues in the region. Third, the Biden administration’s promotion of the narrative framework of “democracy vs autocracy” has been rejected by both China, regional states, and even US experts. Finally, Chinese academic wish to create an inclusive ASEAN+ structure together with the United States, to prevent the emergence of parallel regional systems.

China’s approach to regional security mechanisms is now in its third stage. The first stage was the phase of institutional participation from the early end of the Cold War to 2001, and the second stage was the initial creation of a functional regional system from 2001 to 2012, where China promoted the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Six-Party Talks on the Korean Peninsula Nuclear Issue, the Beijing Xiangshan Forum, and the China-Laos-Myanmar-Thailand Mekong Joint Patrol and Law Enforcement Mechanism. In the current third stage (2013 and onwards) the Chinese Government has become more active in promoting the construction of a holistic, comprehensive and complex security mechanism for the Asia-Pacific region and hopes to play a greater role in security governance in the Asia-Pacific region.

To support regional stability, China is striving to enhance its capacity to provide public goods for regional non-traditional security. To this end, it has enhanced marine meteorological storm and weather forecasting, assumed a greater burden in regional organisations working on tsunami monitoring, and enhanced institutionalised cooperation with regional countries through initiatives like the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Recommendations

China is a provider of stability and development in the Asia-Pacific region. This report makes four recommendations for how China can improve this role:

• Do not participate in securitisation: China should ensure the continued development of its own economy in the face of anti-globalisation and rising geopolitical risks, and to contribute to the sustained economic development of the region. China should pay special attention to balancing the relationship between development and security, ensuring its own sustainable economic development and contributing to the economic development of the region.
• Improve strategic communication: China should present its own view of regional order and its vision of regional development more clearly: it needs to enhance the effectiveness of its strategic communication and policy dialogues with regional countries, and it needs its “Chinese-style” strategies, concepts and policies clear in a way that is acceptable to regional countries and in a language that they can understand. At the same time, China should be more sensitive to and respectful of the strategic anxieties and interests of regional countries and respond more actively to their concerns, such as concerns that economic influence might be translated into political or diplomatic leverage. If regional countries are suspicious of Chinese motives, it will undermine China’s own development, which is a key to regional stability.
• Support ASEAN and inclusive multilateral cooperation mechanisms: China should continue to strongly support the ASEAN-centered regional security architecture, support dialogue and cooperation, and oppose camp-like confrontation and black-and-white thinking in dealing with security issues. Doing so will not only prevent China and the United States from moving towards two parallel systems of regional governance, but also ensure that the future of China and the United States can build a more inclusive regional order.
• Stabilise China-US relations and delimit “competitive aspects”: China should stabilise China-US relations and strive to prevent the relationship from turning into a “new cold war”. China does not agree that the United States defines the relationship between the two countries in terms of “strategic competition between major powers”, nor does it accept the US policy of “competition, cooperation and confrontation.” However, China has emphasised that the parties should “responsibly manage competitive aspects of the relationship.” What China should make clear is what exactly are the “competitive aspects” of the US-China bilateral relationship. Is it geostrategic influence? Or the model of national governance? Or just critical technologies? If it is not clear to Chinese decisionmakers, then it also not clear to the United States or regional decisionmakers, and China may fall into the trap of competing for global hegemony even if that is not its current intention.

In managing “competitive aspects” of the China-US bilateral relations, China should resolutely prevent a geopolitical zero-sum game with the United States and take the lead on effective strategic, diplomatic and military communication between the two sides to prevent the outbreak of a military conflict that neither side wants.

About the Author

Shao Yuqun 邵育群 is the Director of the Institute for Taiwan, Hong Kong & Macao Studies and Senior Fellow of the Center for America Studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies (SIIS). She previously worked as the Deputy Director of the Department of American Studies and the Director of the Department of Research Management & International Exchange, SIIS. Born in 1975, in Shanghai, she earned her B.A. in Chinese language and literature and M.A. in International Chinese Studies at East China Normal University and her Ph.D. in International Relations at the Fudan University

Disclaimer: The opinions articulated above represent the views of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network or any of its members. The APLN’s website is a source of authoritative research and analysis and serves as a platform for debate and discussion among our senior network members, experts and practitioners, as well as the next generation of policymakers, analysts and advocates. Comments and responses can be emailed to apln@apln.network.

Image: The Chinese flag flies in front of the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai (Picryl).