Chapter One: The Regionalism–Security Nexus in China's Relations with Southeast Asia

Abstract

In Southeast Asia, China's growing economic and political strength has been accompanied by adept diplomacy and active promotion of regional cooperation, institutions and integration. Southeast Asian states and China engage in ‘strategic regionalism’: they seek regional membership for regime legitimation and collective bargaining; and regional integration to enhance economic development, regarded as essential for ensuring national and regime security. Sino-Southeast Asian regionalism is exemplified by the development plans for the Mekong River basin, where ambitious projects for building regional infrastructural linkages and trade contribute to mediating the security concerns of the Mekong countries. However, Mekong regionalism also generates new insecurities. Developing the resources of the Mekong has led to serious challenges in terms of governance, distribution and economic ‘externalities’. Resource-allocation and exploitation conflicts occur most obviously within the realm of water projects, especially hydropower development programmes. While such disputes are not likely to erupt into armed conflict because of the power asymmetry between China and the lower Mekong states, they exacerbate Southeast Asian concerns about China's rise and undermine Chinese rhetoric about peaceful development. But the negative security consequences of developing the Mekong are also due to the shared economic imperative, and the Southeast Asian states' own difficulties with collective action due to existing intramural conflicts.

Notes

¹Shaun Breslin, ‘Theorising East Asian Regionalism(s)’, in Melissa Curley and Nicholas Thomas (eds), Advancing East Asian Regionalism (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 29.

² Ibid.; Amitav Acharya and Goh (eds), Rethinking Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming 2007).

³For further discussion, see Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order (New York: Routledge, 2000).

⁴Michael Leifer, ASEAN and the Security of South-East Asia (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 150.

⁵ Ibid., Chapter 1; Muthiah Alagappa, ‘Comprehensive Security: Interpretations in ASEAN Countries’, in Robert Scalapino et al. (eds), Asian Security Issues: Regional and Global (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1988), pp. 50–78.

⁶Shaun Narine, Explaining ASEAN: Regionalism in Southeast Asia (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), p. 15.

⁷Rodolfo Severino, Southeast Asia in Search of an ASEAN Community: Insights from the Former ASEAN Secretary–General (Singapore: ISEAS, 2006), p. 54; Goh, Meeting the China Challenge: The US in Southeast Asian Regional Security Strategies, Policy Studies Monograph no. 16 (Washington DC: East–West Center, 2005), pp. 19–23.

⁸Severino, Southeast Asia, pp. 56–7 and 66–7; Phongsavath Boupha, The Evolution of the Lao State (Delhi: Konark Publishers, 2002), p. 163; Ronald Bruce St John, Revolution, Reform and Regionalism in Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 198–99.

⁹Johnston and Ross (eds), Engaging China; Goh and Acharya, ‘The ASEAN Regional Forum and Security Regionalism: Comparing Chinese and American Positions’, in Curley and Thomas (eds), Advancing East Asian Regionalism.

¹⁰Rosemary Foot, ‘China in the ASEAN Regional Forum: Organizational Processes and Domestic Modes of Thought’, Asian Survey, vol. 38, no. 5, 1998, pp. 425–40; Goh and Acharya, ‘The ASEAN Regional Forum’. The White Paper, entitled China's National Defense in 2002, is available at http://www.china.org.cn/e-white, together with a list of other White Papers, including a second defence paper in 2004.

¹¹‘China Snuggles Up to Southeast Asia’, Asia Times, 7 October 2003. ASEAN has invited all its dialogue partners to sign the TAC. China was the first ASEAN partner to accede to the treaty, along with India. They were followed in 2004 by Japan, South Korea and Russia, leaving the United States as a conspicuous exception.

¹²‘China's Rise: Export Boon for SE Asia’, Straits Times, 29 April 2002; ASEAN–China Expert Group on Economic Cooperation, Forging Closer ASEAN–China Economic Relations in the Twenty-first Century, October 2001, available at http://www.aseansec.org. For a succinct analysis of the economic and political significance of the China–ASEAN negotiations, see Alice Ba, ‘China and ASEAN: Renavigating Relations for a Twenty-first Century Asia’, Asian Survey, vol. 43, no. 4, 2003, pp. 622–47.

¹³Goh, ‘Southeast Asian Reactions to America's New Strategic Imperatives’, in Jonathan Pollack (ed.), Asia Eyes America: US Asia-Pacific Strategy in the Twenty-first Century (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, forthcoming 2007).

¹⁴See Acharya, ‘Regional Institutions and Security Order: Norms, Identity, and Prospects for Peaceful Change’, in Alagappa (ed.), Asian Security Order: Instrumental and Normative Features (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002). For a more detailed discussion of these Southeast Asian regional security strategies, see Goh, ‘Great Powers and Southeast Asian Regional Security Strategies: Omni-enmeshment, Complex Balancing and Hierarchical Order’, mimeo, 2006.

¹⁵Zhao Shuisheng (ed.), Chinese Foreign Policy: Pragmatism and Strategic Behaviour (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004); Zheng Bijian, ‘China's “Peaceful Rise” to Great Power Status’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 84, no. 5, September–October 2005, pp. 18–24.

¹⁶Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping, ‘China's Regional Strategy’, in David Shambaugh (ed.), Power Shift: China and Asia's New Dynamics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), p. 51.

¹⁷See Avery Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge: China's Grand Strategy and International Security (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), Chapter 5. See also Wang Jisi, ‘China's Changing Role in Asia’ in Kokobun Ryosei and Wang Jisi (eds), The Rise of China and a Changing East Asian Order (Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2004); and Ba, ‘China and ASEAN’, pp. 630–38.

¹⁸For a fuller discussion, see Foot, ‘China's Regional Activism: Leadership, Leverage, and Protection’, Global Change, Peace, and Security, vol. 17, no. 2, June 2005, pp. 141–53; Shambaugh, ‘China Engages Asia’.

¹⁹ China's Position Paper on the New Security Concept, 31 July 2002, http://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/wjb/zzjg/gjs/gjzzyhy/2612/2614/t15319.htm. On cooperative security in Chinese strategy, see Michael Yahuda, ‘Chinese Dilemmas in Thinking about Regional Security Architecture’, Pacific Review, vol. 16, no. 2, 2003, pp. 189–206.

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Evelyn Goh

Dr Evelyn Goh is University Lecturer in International Relations and Fellow of St Anne's College, University of Oxford. Her research interests are Asian security, US–China relations, US foreign policy, and international relations theory. She has a long-standing academic interest in environment and development issues, and has studied the geopolitics of the Mekong region for ten years.