China's Rise and the Making of East Asia's Security Architecture

Abstract

This article examines the recent growth in multilateral security processes, the efforts to forge a ‘security architecture’, and focuses particularly on the role that China's rise has played in this process. It sketches out growth in Asian security cooperation and the efforts to forge a new security architecture. It then considers the question of China as a cause of this increase in security cooperation as well as China's own motives in actively engaging with this process. The final section then reflects on the contribution that security cooperation currently makes to the regional order. The article argues that China's rise has been an important prompt to the efforts to devise new security arrangements, but has not been the only source of this trend. It concludes that while multilateral security cooperation will be important in the emerging regional order, alone it will not provide a robust foundation for regional stability and security.

Notes

*Nick Bisley is Professor of International Relations and Convenor of the Politics and International Relations Program at La Trobe University. His research and teaching expertise is in the international relations of the Asia–Pacific, globalization and the diplomacy of great powers. He is a Senior Research Associate of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and a member of the Council for Security and Cooperation in the Asia–Pacific. Nick is the author of many works on international relations, including Building Asia's Security: Toward a 21st Century Regional Security Architecture (IISS/Routledge, 2009), Rethinking Globalization (Palgrave, 2007) and The End of the Cold War and the Causes of Soviet Collapse (Palgrave, 2004). He can be reached by email at [email protected]

^1. For illustrative examples of this see: Doug Bandow, ‘The Asian century’, National Interest Online, (17 February 2009); Kishore Mahbubani, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (New York: Public Affairs, 2008); Coral Bell, The End of the Vasco da Gama Era: The Next Landscape of World Politics, Lowy Institute Paper No. 21 (Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2007); and Nick Bisley, ‘Global power shift: the decline of the West and the rise of the rest?’, in Mark Beeson and Nick Bisley, eds, Issues in 21st Century World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010).

^2. See for example, Kevin Rudd, ‘Address to the Asia Pacific Community Conference’, Sydney, 4 December 2009, available at: http://pmrudd.archive.dpmc.gov.au/node/6368.

^3. For example, see Robert G. Sutter, The United States in Asia (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).

^4. Signalled most clearly in the 1998 Nye report, Department of Defence, The United States Security Strategy for the East Asia–Pacific Region, 1998 (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1998). It has also been reiterated in the latest Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR) and is regularly reiterated by senior officials visiting the region. See Department of Defence, Quadrennial Defence Review Report (Washington, DC: US Government, February 2010).

^5. For example, Hillary Clinton, ‘US–Asia Relations: Indispensable to our Future’, Speech to the Asia Society, 13 February 2009, available at: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/02/117333.htm.

^6. See Mark Beeson and Fujian Li, ‘Charmed or alarmed? Reading China's regional relations’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(73) (2012), pp. 35–52.

^7. For broad details see IISS, The Military Balance, 2010 (London: Routledge for IISS, 2010), pp. 377–393; for more detail on the offensive weapons acquisitions see Robert Hartfiel and Brian L. Job, ‘Raising the risks of war: defence spending trends and competitive arms processes in East Asia’, The Pacific Review 20(1), (March 2007), pp. 1–22.

^8. On regional arms racing see Desmond Ball, Security Trends in the Asia–Pacific Region: An Emerging Complex Arms Race, SDSC Working Paper No. 380 (Canberra, November 2003), available at: http://rspas.anu.edu.au/papers/sdsc/wp/wp_sdsc_380.pdf; on Japan and China's ‘soft’ arms race see Christopher W. Hughes, Japan's Remilitarisation (London: Routledge for IISS, 2009), pp. 35–52.

^9. See also Derek McDougall, ‘Responses to “rising China” in the East Asian region: soft balancing with accommodation’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(73) (2012), pp. 1–18.

^10. Japan Center for International Exchange, ‘Track II: multisectoral policy meetings’, Dialogue and Research Monitor: Towards Community Building in East Asia, available at: http://www.jcie.or.jp/drm/2008/track2.html.

^11. This section draws on material published in Nick Bisley, Building Asia's Security, Adelphi No. 408 (London: Routledge for IISS, 2009).

^12. William T. Tow and Brendan Taylor, ‘What is Asian security architecture’, Review of International Studies 36(1), (2010), pp. 95–116.

^13. See for example, Amitav Acharya, ‘Regional institutions and security in the Asia–Pacific: evolution, adaptation and prospects for transformation’, in Amitav Acharya and Evelyn Goh, eds, Reassessing Security Cooperation in the Asia–Pacific: Competition, Congruence and Transformation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), pp. 19–40.

^14. See, generally, Robert Ayson and Desmond Ball, eds, Strategy and Security in the Asia–Pacific (Crow's Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2006).

^15. For example, David Martin Jones and Michael L. R. Smith, ‘Making process not progress: ASEAN and the evolving East Asian regional order’, International Security 32(1), (2007), pp. 148–184.

^16. On the evolution of the idea see Tow and Taylor, ‘What is Asian security architecture’, pp. 99–100.

^17. On the evolution of the idea see Tow and Taylor, ‘What is Asian security architecture’

^18. For examples of different calls to create an architecture, see: Kevin Rudd, ‘Speech to the Asia Society’, June 2008, available at: http://www.pm.gov.au/media/Speech/2008/speech_0286.cfm; Jusuf Wanandi, ‘ASEAN Charter and remodelling regional architecture’, Jakarta Post, (3 November 2008); Allan Gyngell, ‘Design faults: the Asia–Pacific's regional architecture’, Lowy Institute Policy Brief (Sydney: Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2007); ‘Hatoyama pushes East Asian community’, Asahi Shimbun, (23 September 2009), available at: http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200909230045.html.

^19. For example, see: Michael Brown, ed., The Rise of China (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000); Robert Sutter, China's Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); and David Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

^20. For a discussion of the factors shaping the growth in multilateralism see Brendan Taylor, ‘Security cooperation in the Asia–Pacific region’, in Ron Huisken and Meredith Taylor, eds, History as Policy: Framing the Debate on the Future of Australian Defence (Canberra: ANU E-Press, 2007), pp. 117–128.

^21. On the security vulnerabilities of globalization see, more generally, Jonathan Kirshner, ‘Globalization, American power and international security’, Political Science Quarterly 213(3), (2008), pp. 363–390; and Nick Bisley, Rethinking Globalization (Palgrave, 2007), ch. 6.

^22. See Ralph Emmers, Non-Traditional Security in the Asia–Pacific. The Dynamics of Securitization (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2004).

^23. E.g. Alice D. Ba, ‘China and ASEAN: renavigating relations for a 21st century Asia’, Asian Survey 43(4), (2003), pp. 622–647.

^24. Evelyn Goh, ‘Great powers and hierarchical order in Southeast Asia: analyzing regional security strategies’, International Security 32(3), (2007), pp. 113–157.

^25. For further detail see, Bisley, Building Asia's Security, pp. 93–97.

^26. See Hongying Wang, ‘Multilateralism in Chinese foreign policy: the limits of socialization’, Asian Survey 40(3), (2000), pp. 475–491.

^27. Wu Xinbu, ‘Chinese perspectives on building an East Asian community in the 21st century’, in Michael J. Green and Bates Gill, eds, Asia's New Multilateralism: Cooperation, Competition and the Search for Community (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), pp. 56–57.

^28. On which see Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert S. Ross, eds, New Directions in Chinese Foreign Policy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).

^29. See generally, Kevin Sheives, ‘China turns West: Beijing's contemporary strategy towards Central Asia’, Pacific Affairs 79(2), (2006), pp. 205–224.

^30. Kenneth Lieberthal, ‘How domestic forces shape the PRC's grand strategy and international impact’, in Ashley Tellis and Michael Wills, eds, Strategic Asia, 2007–08: Domestic Political Change and Grand Strategy (Seattle, WA and Washington, DC: NBR, 2007), pp. 29–66 at pp. 35–36.

^31. See, for example, speeches by General Ma Xiaotian at the Shangri-La Dialogue, 2009, available at: http://www.iiss.org/conferences/the-shangri-la-dialogue/shangri-la-dialogue-2009/plenary-session-speeches-2009/second-plenary-session/lieutenant-general-ma-xiaotian/ and 2010, available at: http://www.iiss.org/conferences/the-shangri-la-dialogue/shangri-la-dialogue-2010/plenary-session-speeches/second-plenary-session/ma-xiaotian/.

^32. See Mohan Malik, ‘The East Asia Summit’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 60(2), (2006), pp. 207–211.

^33. See Tow and Taylor, ‘What is Asian security architecture’, p. 106.

^34. Personal observation of the author.

^35. This was evident at the 2010 Shangri-La Dialogue, see ‘Lost horizon’, The Economist, (12 June 2010), pp. 39–40.

^36. Bill Emmott, Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan will Shape our Next Decade (London: Allen Lane, 2008).

^37. For an assessment of how Australia has responded to this dilemma see Baogang He, ‘Politics of accommodation of the rise of China: the case of Australia’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(73), (2012), pp. 53–70.

^38. For its impact on ODA patterns see, James Reilly, ‘A norm-taker or a norm-maker? China's ODA in Southeast Asia’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(73), (2012), pp. 71–92.