Charmed or Alarmed? Reading China's regional relations

Abstract

China has rapidly re-emerged as a major regional power in East Asia. Although this represents a return to a long-established historical pattern, the ability of China's political elites to reassure nervous neighbours about the implications of its rise will be a major test of its evolving and increasingly sophisticated foreign policies. In this paper we focus primarily on China's regional engagement strategies, detailing the way such initiatives are understood in China, and the way they are received elsewhere. We focus primarily on the political and economic impacts of China's policies, and briefly consider their reception in Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. We highlight the different dynamics and issues that China's policymakers must consider in each area, and suggest that despite some difficulties and tensions, on balance, China's policies are proving surprisingly effective.

Notes

*Mark Beeson is Winthrop Professor of Political Science and International Studies, at the University of Western Australia. Before joining UWA he taught at the universities of Murdoch, Griffith, Queensland, York (UK) and Birmingham, where he was also head of department. Fujian Li is a Ph.D. student based in the Discipline Group of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Western Australia. His Ph.D. research is focused on China's evolving regional policies in Asia. The authors can be reached by email at [email protected]

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^59. We are indebted to Baogang He for highlighting the importance of this issue.

^60. It is worth noting that this argument appears to be doing Ma's political position no harm, and may actually be reversing his recent declining popularity. See ‘Seconds out, round one’, The Economist, (1 May 2010), pp. 28–29.

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^82. Other contributions to this collection examine this in more detail. See 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; and Nick Bisley, ‘China's rise and the making of East Asia's security architecture’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(73) (2012), pp. 19–34.

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