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China's Rise and the Making of EastAsia's Security ArchitectureNick BisleyPublished online: 04 Nov 2011.

To cite this article: Nick Bisley (2012) China's Rise and the Making of East Asia's SecurityArchitecture, Journal of Contemporary China, 21:73, 19-34, DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2012.627663

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China’s Rise and the Making of EastAsia’s Security ArchitectureNICK BISLEY*

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.

There is a growing sense among scholars and policy-makers that world politics is

undergoing a profound shift in its structural circumstances.1 There are a range of

metaphors that writers use to illustrate this transformation, with some arguing that

Asia will become the ‘epicentre of international affairs’, others that it is becoming the

‘centre of gravity’ in world politics, while others have gone so far as to claim that

Asia will become the ‘cockpit of global affairs’ in the coming century.2 While it is not

clear that Asia has definitively replaced the North Atlantic as the most influential

geopolitical or geoeconomic space in the world—in spite of the remarkable growth of

India and China, hundreds of millions of Asians remain mired in poverty—it is

* Nick Bisley is Professor of International Relations and Convenor of the Politics and International RelationsProgram 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 InternationalInstitute of Strategic Studies and a member of the Council for Security and Cooperation in the Asia–Pacific. Nick isthe author of many works on international relations, including Building Asia’s Security: Toward a 21st CenturyRegional Security Architecture (IISS/Routledge, 2009), Rethinking Globalization (Palgrave, 2007) and The End ofthe Cold War and the Causes of Soviet Collapse (Palgrave, 2004). He can be reached by email atN.Bisley@latrobe.edu.au.

1. For illustrative examples of this see: Doug Bandow, ‘The Asian century’, National Interest Online, (17February 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 WorldPolitics, Lowy Institute Paper No. 21 (Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2007); and Nick Bisley, ‘Global powershift: the decline of the West and the rise of the rest?’, in Mark Beeson and Nick Bisley, eds, Issues in 21st CenturyWorld Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010).

2. See for example, Kevin Rudd, ‘Address to the Asia Pacific Community Conference’, Sydney, 4 December2009, available at: http://pmrudd.archive.dpmc.gov.au/node/6368.

Journal of Contemporary China (2012), 21(73), January, 19–34

ISSN 1067-0564 print/ 1469-9400 online/12/730019–16 q 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2012.627663

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increasingly clear that the economic, strategic and security concerns of Asian statesand societies are of global significance. A dispute over Taiwan could prompt conflictbetween China and the US, while Asian states’ attitudes toward domestic develop-ment priorities are vital to developing a global response to climate change.

The period of Asia’s resurgence has involved a number of important trends. Whileit is clear that the central reason for Asia’s revival is the stunning economictransformation of China and, more recently India, the precondition to this has beenthe remarkable period of peace and stability that Asian states have enjoyed during thepast 30 years. There have been no major conflicts among states, no aggressiveexpansionism, nor efforts to undermine states through insurgency or revolution.Fascination with the economic dimensions of Asia’s rise is entirely warranted givenits epochal importance and unprecedented speed and scale, but we must recognizethat it depends, like all periods of economic expansion, on the pillars of geopoliticalstability. In turn, this stability is generally thought to have relied on the USmaintaining the strategic balance through its extensive forward projection of militaryforce.3 While America’s regional presence was originally prompted by Cold Warconsiderations, in the wake of the Soviet collapse America committed itself to a longterm strategic presence in the region.4 As President Obama and other senior figureshave made clear, America considers itself to be a Pacific power and will remain inand of the region, strategically and economically, over the long term.5

Yet while economic growth and geopolitical stability have been mutuallyreinforcing trends, the region is not entirely at ease.6 The third important trend of thepast decade, and for many its most disconcerting, is the dramatic increase in defenceexpenditure and military modernization programmes that virtually every state in theregion is undertaking. Asia has become not just the most economically dynamicregion in world politics, it has also become the region that spends most on defence.While some of this increase comes from growing personnel costs (such as salariesand pensions), the growth in Asian defence spending is heavily consumed byoffensive weapon acquisition.7 Asian states are expanding their missile fleets,acquiring attack submarines, developing more sophisticated maritime war fightingabilities, supersonic jet fighters and acquiring ballistic missile capabilities thatexpand the range and lethality of most states’ defence forces. Some go so far as toargue that there is an incipient or ‘soft’ arms race underway.8 However viewed, Asian

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 latestQuadrennial Defence Review (QDR) and is regularly reiterated by senior officials visiting the region. See Departmentof 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 ofContemporary 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 moredetail on the offensive weapons acquisitions see Robert Hartfiel and Brian L. Job, ‘Raising the risks of war: defencespending 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 EmergingComplex 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’sRemilitarisation (London: Routledge for IISS, 2009), pp. 35–52.

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states are uneasy in the current atmosphere and are taking traditional defencemeasures to assuage these uncertainties which are, in turn, fostering typical securitydilemma responses across the region.9

The final key development in Asia’s strategic relations over the past decade and ahalf has been the striking proliferation of multilateral security mechanisms andprocesses, a development that reflects the somewhat divergent forces at work in theregion. Since the creation of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1994, securitycooperation among Asian states has developed at a remarkable pace. While in therelatively recent past Asian states had been very wary of even the most tepid formsof security multilateralism, in the past 15 years they have more than made up forthis earlier trepidation. With what could almost be described as a promiscuousdelight, the region has established a bewildering array of security processes. Thereare presently 13 distinct intergovernmental institutions and mechanisms thatattempt to improve regional security; there are a further array of bilateral forms ofsecurity cooperation (such as the US alliance system and counter-terrorismagreements); and in 2008 more than 260 Track II meetings were held dealing withsecurity related concerns.10

While Asia’s defence and security concerns have become more important for theworld, the strategic landscape within Asia is itself in a state of flux. Power is beingredistributed among states and peoples, Cold War strategic arrangements are beingretooled, changed circumstances have brought about not only new forms of securitythreats but new thinking as to the nature of security itself, and globalization isweaving complex networks of trade, investment and communication challengingtraditional forms of statecraft and traditional conceptions of interests. This paper isconcerned with this latter trend—efforts to use multilateral and institutionalprocesses to try to foster some kind of regional security architecture—and isparticularly concerned with the impact that China’s rise has had on this process andthe broader implications of this interaction for the region’s international order.

The paper is organized in three parts. The first discusses briefly the growth inAsian security cooperation and the efforts to forge a new security architecture. Thesecond then considers the role played in this process by the rise of China. Itconsiders both the question of China as a cause of security cooperation as well asChina’s own motives in actively engaging with this process. The final section thenreflects on the contribution that security cooperation currently makes to the regionalorder. The paper broadly argues that China’s rise has been an important prompt tothe efforts to devise new security arrangements, but this has been by no means theonly motivating factor. It further concludes that while multilateral securitycooperation will play an important part in the emerging regional order, it alone willnot provide a robust foundation for regional stability and security, instead it will beone of three facets of the region’s strategic landscape, the other two beingAmerica’s bilateral alliance system and the set of bilateral relations among themajor powers.

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

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

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I. Cooperation and security architecture

It is unsurprising that Asia’s strategic landscape is in transition, given the nature andscale of the rapid change to the domestic circumstances of so many states. It is morenotable, however, that as a response to these changes Asian states have been soenthusiastic, at least in some respects, in their turn toward multilateral securitycooperation. It is a region with a range of old-fashioned territorial disputes, in whichconfidence in existing bilateral alliance relationships is strong (among those whohave them), where mutual trust or a sense of common cause across the region hasbeen notable by its absence and, of course, where a traditional conception ofsovereignty is highly prized. In spite of this, however, Asian states have established aremarkable array of cooperative security institutions, mechanisms and processes overthe past 10–15 years.11 While this has created a tangled thicket of summits, processesand acronyms, one can, nevertheless, discern three clear trends among thesedevelopments. The first has been the creation of a set of new institutional bodies thatare devoted exclusively to security concerns such as the Shanghai CooperationOrganization. The second has been the creation of new pan-regional bodies whichattempt to foster broader cooperative and community goals but amongst whichsecurity is seen as a primary concern, such as the East Asia Summit. This stands instark contrast with earlier practices whereby cooperation sought to maintain a clear,and in many respects artificial, line between economic and security policy. The third,and related, involves the addition of security concerns to the work programme ofexisting bodies that have hitherto not seen security as a core concern, such as APEC.Here it is particularly telling that members of Asia’s institutions feel that security isnot only clearly something with which the bodies that are concerned with economiccooperation should be involved, but they feel that the institutions can better ensurethe interest of their members by focusing on questions of security.

Before getting to the detail of the developments in security cooperation it isnecessary to make clear what is meant by the ideas of security cooperation andsecurity architecture. As scholars have recently pointed out, neither term has a settledmeaning and they are the subject of more than a little analytic confusion.12 In thescholarly literature there is a tendency to assume that security cooperation necessarilyentails multilateral forms of inter-state activity, such as efforts to forge a securitycommunity or a collective defence arrangement;13 yet much cooperation in theregion, and for many its most important forms, are bilateral arrangements, mostobviously America’s bilateral military alliances. Thus when discussing cooperationone must recognize both multilateral and bilateral forms; equally one shouldrecognize that the substantive policy commitment entailed varies tremendously aswell. From the hard commitments of alliances through to little more than political

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 Studies36(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 SecurityCooperation in the Asia–Pacific: Competition, Congruence and Transformation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007),pp. 19–40.

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theatre, inter-state cooperation on matters of security in Asia entails an extremelybroad range of policies and forms of statecraft. This paper defines securitycooperation as denoting common action between two or more states to advance acommon security goal. This reflects both the diversity of forms and structures as wellas the broader purposes to which Asian security cooperation is put.

With that in mind one can identify a range of particular types of cooperationoccurring in the region and which can be grouped according to whether it ismultilateral or bilateral. On the multilateral front there are a set of on-goinginstitutions, summit meetings and processes whereby states gather to discussprimarily security concerns. This includes institutions such as the ASEAN regionalforum and the SCO as well as regular dialogue forums. Here there have been anumber of important developments, including the 2002 creation of the Shangri-LaDialogue, that brings states as well as experts together from across the region todiscuss security and defence cooperation, as well as the more narrowly constitutedTrilateral Security Dialogue between Japan, Australia and the US. The TSD seeks tocoordinate the defence policies of the three. An interesting recent development hasbeen the formation of the Tripartite Summit of South Korea, China and Japan, whichis intended to help improve regional confidence and broader economic and securitycollaboration.

The second kind of multilateral process involves a number of initiatives andprocesses that have been established to deal with specific crises and which areterminated upon the completion of their work. The most significant current example ofthis is the Six Party Talks (SPT) and one might also add the INTERFET intervention inEast Timor as a past example. It operated under UN mandate but was primarilycomprised of and led by regional states. The third form of activity are institutionalmechanisms which seek to advance broader aims such as economic prosperity orcommunity building that include security cooperation as one of their functional areasof activity. ASEAN has been the driving force in this area with the creation of a numberof ASEAN-linked groupings, most notably, ASEAN þ 3, the ASEAN DefenceMinisters Meetings and the EAS. While the EAS has yet to establish a clear workprogramme, ASEAN has made signature of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation aprerequisite for participation. In so doing, ASEAN has sought to export the normativeunderpinnings of the Southeast Asian grouping to the broader region and gives the EASan important, if easily overlooked, security dimension. The final type of multilateralactivity is the vast array of informal and second track meetings and processes wherebyofficials, academics and civil society organizations gather in a private capacity toadvance security cooperation. The Council for Security and Cooperation in the Asia–Pacific is perhaps the best known of these while the Chinese-backed Network of EastAsian Think-tanks is a more recent addition.

While multilateral cooperation tends to dominate much of the writing on regionalsecurity cooperation, it is important to draw attention to the wide range of bilateralforms of cooperation extant in Asia. It is necessary both to paint the fullest possiblepicture of inter-state forms of collaboration on security matters but also because thecombination of bilateral and multilateral approaches pursued by many states reflectsdiffering strategic dynamics at work in the region and whose interaction will cruciallyshape the region’s international order in the coming years. Most security analysts

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argue that the most important feature of Asia’s current international strategiclandscape is America’s military presence and the set of bilateral alliances throughwhich it is organized.14 Recent years have seen the expansion of a large number ofbilateral agreements and policy commitments in functional areas that includeintelligence sharing and counter-terrorism as well as humanitarian operations. Thishas noticeably increased since the terrorist attacks of 2001 in the US and 2002 inIndonesia. A third area of cooperation has been the creation of a wide range of on-going high-level bilateral summits and dialogues. Here China has been particularlyactive, with perhaps the most notable example being the US–China strategicdialogue, but there are many others, including dialogues between Japan and the US,Japan and South Korea, Vietnam and the US, and Australia and China. Finally,alongside the growth in multilateral cooperation to improve their humanitarian work,many states have established bilateral mechanisms to further this goal, mostparticularly focused on disaster relief and infectious disease transmission.

Asian states have a broad menu of choices when determining how to advance theirsecurity interests beyond the narrow realm of self-help. This diversity provides theopportunity for creative responses to complex times, but it can be maddeninglyconfusing to follow. Moreover, in many instances the actual policy impact of much ofthese forms of interaction can be difficult to discern, with many critics pointing outthe absence of concrete policy achievements.15 The market place for security policyideas is obviously open, as changing times have prompted new approaches, newpolicies and new mechanisms. Perhaps the most influential of these has been theemergence of the idea of a ‘security architecture’ as a key means to underwrite Asia’sstability and prosperity in the coming years. Many proponents of improved securitycooperation argue that the region needs, not better multilateralism or a reform ofcurrent institutions, but something altogether new, a ‘security architecture’;16 yet, asTow and Taylor have pointed out, the term has tended to be used so loosely that it israrely clear quite what such an architecture would in fact involve.17

To some degree this looseness reflects the broader context of change in the regionand the absence of consensus among policy-makers, analysts and scholars as to thesorts of mechanisms that are most conducive to promote order in the current period. Itis also a testimony to the political utility of imprecision. The absence of a settledmeaning allows one to avoid the normative connotations that go with terms that havemore clear connotations, such as collective security or a security community.Politically, it is extremely hard to argue that China and the US could be part of asecurity community in the short to medium term, but one could mount the argumentthat they should both be part of a security architecture. Architecture implies twofurther things that give the idea particular salience in Asia. First, it indicates theintegration of distinct mechanisms and processes to create some kind of broaderentity. It is an idea that can draw on the many existing efforts to achieve its ambition

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 theevolving 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. Ibid.

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and hence is more practical as it does not necessarily imply the construction ofsomething new. Second, the integration of distinct processes also has an intuitive fitwith the range and security challenges faced by Asian states and societies. Given thatthese include just about everything from traditional inter-state territorial disputes totransnational criminal networks, any process to improve the security of states andsocieties requires mechanisms that operate at different levels and in different forms todeal with the full gamut of problems.

While there are potentially endless ways in which architecture can be used, one canidentify four distinct visions of a security architecture among the many proposals setout by politicians, policy-makers, scholars and analysts.18 While the term issometimes used to refer to individual institutions, for example the ARF or the USalliance system are described by some as ‘architectures’, the four types ofarchitecture identified here use the term to refer to broader multilateral efforts topromote the common security concerns of the participants, not already extant singleentities like ASEAN or the SCO. The first is perhaps the least satisfactory andinvolves a rhetorical rebranding of the complex set of existing mechanismsand processes as an already-existing architecture. The second is the most ambitiousand sees a security architecture as an institutionally strong, top-down multilateralbody that has heavy policy commitments for its members. A common refrain amongthese views is to argue for a NATO-like entity in the region. A third view sees theself-conscious integration of a set of intergovernmental institutions, forums andprocesses, with the explicit goal of protecting the participants’ interests within aspecific geopolitical space. The fourth sees an architecture as a deliberate integrationof a set of existing security mechanisms that seek not only to secure the members’interests but which aim to shape the region’s international order.

Arguments about the extent to which an architecture is needed, and what form andmembership it should have, have become central to broader debates about Asiansecurity. It is clear that the unplanned and uncoordinated expansion ofmultilateralism is not satisfactory and that the changing strategic circumstancesrequire new approaches. As yet, however, building consensus on these fundamentalissues has proven extremely difficult. Asian states clearly want to cooperate more onsecurity questions, but they are uncertain as to the best way of doing this and theextent to which they wish to commit themselves to new measures. These somewhatcontradictory trends have created the complex and uncertain regional order which isfar from settled in a long-term pattern.

II. China’s rise and Asian security cooperation

Since the mid-1990s, Asian states have moved from having virtually no multilateralcooperative efforts to advance common security to having a superabundance of

18. For examples of different calls to create an architecture, see: Kevin Rudd, ‘Speech to the Asia Society’, June2008, available at: http://www.pm.gov.au/media/Speech/2008/speech_0286.cfm; Jusuf Wanandi, ‘ASEAN Charterand 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.

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institutional mechanisms. Central to this has been a broader debate about the need fora security architecture that moves beyond the limitations of the existing arrange-ments. While there has been remarkable expansion in the range, number and remit ofmultilateral processes, one must recognize that there has also been a concomitantgrowth in defence expenditure, focused heavily on offensive weapon acquisition andmodernization, and a reconditioning of America’s alliance system. Why has thisoccurred? This section of the paper considers this question and focuses particularlyon the role that China’s rise has had on these processes.

China as cause

From a security point of view, one of the most pressing questions prompted byChina’s rise is the extent to which it is destabilizing the existing strategic landscape.Among American-based scholars this has prompted a particularly rich literature.19

The dramatic increase in wealth, the increased diplomatic confidence and significantgrowth in defence spending of such a large and strategically crucial state is clearly ofgreat import and marks a key break with the basic Cold War patterns of Asiansecurity. If one of the key strategic developments in the region’s recent past has beena rush to embrace security multilateralism, it would appear reasonable to concludethat this has something to do with China’s rise, but to what extent is this the case?

There are four broad factors which have prompted Asian states to increase theirinterest in security multilateralism.20 The complex set of transnational networks thatlink states and societies and which have generated an increase in the rate, speed andvolume of movements of goods, ideas, people and capital, has created a raft ofeconomic opportunities from which Asian states have been particular beneficiaries.Yet globalization presents not only new opportunities for trade, investment orinformation, it also makes Asia’s states and societies vulnerable in novel ways.21

Infectious diseases, unregulated population movement, transnational criminal andterrorist organizations all thrive in these networks. States and societies have theirinterests threatened in ways in which they find very hard, if not impossible, to respondon their own. It is the growing awareness of these new threats, and the requirement tocoordinate their policies to respond effectively to them, that is a central concern ofmuch of the new security multilateralism. Whether in the ASEAN DefenceMinisters’ Meetings, the Shangri-La Dialogue, the East Asia Summit, the ARF andthe SCO, the security threats brought about or exacerbated by the networks ofglobalization are a central concern.

A second motive force relates to the first and derives not only from new andimmediate threats, such as transnational terrorism, but from a conceptual shift

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, ChinaRising: 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, ‘Securitycooperation in the Asia–Pacific region’, in Ron Huisken and Meredith Taylor, eds, History as Policy: Framing theDebate 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 NickBisley, Rethinking Globalization (Palgrave, 2007), ch. 6.

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embraced by policy-makers and analysts across the region. Where in the past securitywas largely thought to be a military matter and challenges to a state’s securityinterests stemmed from the military actions of other states, over the past 15 years,security has become understood to incorporate a wide array of policy sectors.Concerns about energy, water, access to resources, the environment and populationmovement have become acute concerns deserving of the special policy treatmentthat ‘security’ confers.22 In broadening out the concept of security to involvemultidimensional and in many cases transnational processes, policy-makers andanalysts have created circumstances in which a turn to the multilateral is seen as notonly a natural response but indeed a necessary one given the character of the threatswith which they are faced.

Asian states have a host of traditional security concerns, the pre-eminent of whichare an array of as yet unresolved territorial disputes, ranging from the multinationalclaims over islands and reefs in the South China Sea to border disputes in theHimalayas. To be clear, states are not turning to security multilateralism to resolvethese problems, indeed in many respects the unresolved character of these disputes inthe face of so much institutional growth shows the very clear limits of thesemechanisms; rather it is the recognition of the risks that these disputes pose given theincreasingly inter-connected character of Asian states’ interests that is driving statesto security multilateralism. States recognize that they have considerable sharedinterests that are at risk if these issues are not managed. This goes some of the way toexplaining why Asian states are very keen on dialogue forums—they help the flow ofinformation and facilitate diplomatic signalling—while being hesitant about moresubstantive policy commitments.

The final reason derives from the broader uncertainties that have been generated bythe perception that the region is undergoing a set of potentially epoch-shapingprocesses of power transition. From Russia’s hydro-carbon fuelled resuscitation toIndia’s dramatic growth, America’s economic and strategic problems and, of course,China’s extraordinary economic and strategic advances, the rapid transformationof the domestic prospects of so many key powers has prompted a wide-rangingperception that the region is in flux and that new approaches to security are necessaryto respond to these complex challenges. Of these processes there is no doubt thatChina’s economic transformation, and its concomitant military and diplomatic heft,is the most important for Asian states.

While the broader sense of change is prompting a considerable degree ofuncertainty in the region, one can identify a number of distinct ways, although not allmutually supportive, in which China’s rise has prompted states to turn to multilateralsecurity mechanisms as a response. The first is perhaps the most recognized, wherebythe minor powers and, most particularly, Southeast Asian states seek to engage withChina through these processes as a means of integrating it into the existing regionalorder and to shape its interests in a way that is least destabilizing for the minorpowers.23 Goh argues that this strategy is not directed only toward China, but is

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.

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targeted toward all the major powers in what she calls an ‘omni-enmeshment’strategy.24 One of the greatest fears of Southeast Asian states is that the current periodof flux results in a dangerously unstable multipolar region and that these lesserpowers risk suffering from conflict and antagonism as well as a broader decline intheir influence over the region’s international relations. To avert this prospect theyare seeking to bring the major powers into regional institutions so as to ensure that thepowers think about their interests in ways that maintain the basic patterns of thecurrent order.

If the first approach is informed by liberal institutionalist thinking, the second hasa more realist pedigree. The turn to multilateralism, and particularly efforts to forgesome kind of security architecture, is an attempt to damp down incipient majorpower rivalry and to reduce the risks of misinterpretation or miscalculation that mayturn a period of transition into an environment of competition.25 This is an approachwhich assumes that multilateralism will not altogether remove the contestationbetween emerging and existing powers, most particularly between China and the USand China and Japan, but which sees it as the best way of managing incipientcompetition. Asia’s security multilateralism, from this perspective, is a form ofhedging whereby states seek to reduce the risks of regional instability by improvingthe flow of information amongst themselves so as to dampen the consequences of thenew security dilemmas that are an inevitable part of periods of power transition.From this view, discussions at Shangri-La, the ARF or the EAS are not intended tolead to the formation of a security community, but to manage the securityconsequences that flow from the rise of China, as well as America’s difficulties andIndia’s transformation.

The other ambition that regional powers have for multilateral security mechanismsis for them to not only shape China’s interests but to have an influence on itsnormative preferences. Here multilateralism is about not just ensuring that China seesa value in the existing regional order, but that fundamental issues to do with itsidentity and values are influenced by external mechanisms. In this sense, multilateralsecurity initiatives are in keeping with the broader institutional efforts to try tosocialize a rising China into existing modes of international behaviour.26 By creatingmultilateral mechanisms that embody existing principles, Asian states are seeking toensure that China, as well as other major powers, conceive of their interests in waysthat do not destabilize both the existing geopolitical order, as well as the values andprinciples on which it rests.

It would clearly be too much to claim that the burst of enthusiasm that Asian stateshave shown for multilateral security mechanisms is entirely due to the rise of China.Alongside the emerging threats brought about by globalization, as well as the shifts inattitude toward security more generally, the emergence of an increasingly wealthy,confident and ambitious China, however, has been a key force shaping the broaderpursuit of security multilateralism in Asia and its particular modalities.

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.

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What does China want from security architecture?

China is a member of, or regular participant in, the following multilateral groupings:APEC, ARF, ASEAN þ 3, the EAS, the SCO, the Shangri-La Dialogue, the Six PartyTalks, ADMM þ and the Tripartite Summit (China, Japan and South Korea). It isthus a member of all the pan-regional groupings, a number of sub-regional processesand has been the lead player in the formation of the SCO. China is, thus, an activeparticipant in the region’s security processes; but what does it seek in such a wideparticipation and what are Chinese attitudes to the changes in Asia’s securitylandscape, of which increasing multilateralism is a central part?

Like many Asian states, China was initially a reluctant participant in securitymultilateralism. It was a foundation member of the ARF in 1994, however, itsparticipation was in spite of significant misgivings about the potential of the ARF to beused to contain China, particularly by the US, and the prospects that the ARF couldundermine its position in the disputed territories in the South China Sea.27 However,ASEAN’s dominance of the ARF agenda, as well as the continuing centrality of a strictconception of sovereignty, meant that these fears about multilateral processes wereunfounded. Following this experience, China’s attitude to security cooperation beganto shift. More broadly, China’s approach to the expansion of regional securitymultilateralism reflects the turn toward a more pragmatic and engaged foreign policydisposition.28 In particular, China’s attitude was shaped by the realization that stabilityin its immediate neighbourhood was a fundamental interest and that multilateralprocesses could effectively enhance the more traditional bilateral approaches todealing with these challenges. Emblematic of this was China’s leadership in thecreation of the SCO, whose primary focus was and remains the geopolitical stability ofthe former Soviet space in Central Asia that abuts its extensive South-western border.29

The SCO represents the broader trends in regional security multilateralism, as well asChina’s shift from a more passive to a more active stance in this sphere of foreign andsecurity policy.

Since the shift in Chinese foreign policy that took place in the late-1990s, China’sengagement with multilateral security processes has been intended to help achievethree main goals. The first is the most important and indeed is the determining factorin Chinese grand strategy. The communist party’s strongest commitment is tomaintain domestic economic growth at or around current levels for at least the next 20years. The leadership believe that if GDP growth rates fall much below 8% perannum then social disorder becomes increasingly likely. Thus its international policyis informed in the first instance by a desire to create and maintain an internationalenvironment which is most conducive to this domestic economic priority. Thusinvolvement in multilateral security processes is intended to play an important part inthis broader strategy. Most particularly it is intended to help ensure an immediate

27. Wu Xinbu, ‘Chinese perspectives on building an East Asian community in the 21st century’, in MichaelJ. 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.

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neighbourhood in which conflict is unlikely to damage domestic economicdevelopment. The other related motivation on this front is to reduce concerns thatregional powers have about China’s rise. In seeking to damp down potential regionaldiscontent from its dramatic growth and to maintain a stable periphery, China’sapproach to regional multilateralism is informed by the key priorities of its grandstrategy.30

The second main aim of China’s participation in these processes of securitycooperation is to exert influence on the broader dynamics of regional order. If the firstaim was more narrowly instrumental, that is to help develop an international contextmost conducive to domestic economic growth, the second is about shaping patterns ofbehaviour in a time of change. China currently recognizes that America is theregion’s most powerful and most important state and that its forward militaryprojection provides important benefits to China, most particularly through themaintenance of the region’s relatively stable strategic balance. China is, however,clearly uneasy about the longer run perpetuation of this arrangement and, at leastamong some quarters of the elite, there is a belief that the US will seek to preventChina achieving its full economic potential. As such, China does not wish tochallenge or contest US primacy in the short to medium term, but does seek to reduceAmerican influence in the region and particularly in the nascent institutionalprocesses that may, in time, have an important role to play in the emerging order.While the language has moved away from the ‘anti-hegemonism’ of the late-1990s,in summits and other dialogue forums Chinese representatives make gentle jibesabout the American alliance system and emphasize the need for new norms andprocesses to manage a changing region.31 It is hardly the stuff of a new cold war, yetChina’s approach to multilateral mechanisms seeks to dilute US influence withoutcausing any immediate diplomatic or strategic contestation.

The PRC also seeks to use multilateral venues as a means to express theirinfluence and to promote venues for cooperation in which its interests and valuesare best served. Thus China has been less enthusiastic about pan-Asian and trans-Pacific approaches to regional multilateralism than more narrowly East Asianvisions. For example, in the lead up to the first EAS meeting in Kuala Lumpur in2005 there was considerable diplomatic heat created by China’s efforts to preventa Japanese-led move to include India, Australia and New Zealand in thegrouping.32 This was caused not just by Sino-Japanese rivalry and tensions aboutleadership in the region but also by China’s belief that its capacity to exertinfluence would be reduced with the inclusion of a large power and a key Americanally. China was unable to have its way—many ASEAN states felt that the newbody would give China too much potential influence—and as such has tended to

30. Kenneth Lieberthal, ‘How domestic forces shape the PRC’s grand strategy and international impact’, inAshley 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.

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favour the narrower ASEAN þ 3 grouping as its venue of choice for regionaldealings.

China’s third aim in its security cooperation is the more traditional functionalbenefits that many states seek from multilateralism. China, like most in the region,wants to avoid regional instability so as to maximize its prospects for prosperity andalso has a range of new security problems, from environmental concerns totransnational terrorism, which require multilateral cooperation to respond to themeffectively. China’s participation in regional security cooperation is thus a responseto the security challenges thrown up by globalization while also being informedby a realization that the strategic landscape is changing. China seeks mutuallyadvantageous resolutions to common problems and also aims to improve the flow ofinformation about security concerns, both in terms of its own behaviour and policyand that of regional powers. In this dimension, its approach to multilateralism mirrorsthat of many other Asian states.

Finally, while the PRC is clearly supportive of multilateral security cooperation,China is distinctly ambivalent about the more ambitious efforts to forge a grandinstitutional or architectural vision for the region.33 Whether this is due to aperception that architecture is code for the US alliance system or a broader scepticismabout the viability of such approaches, Chinese elites are distinctly ambivalent aboutarchitectural ambitions. Such proposals fly counter to some of the basic motivationsthe PRC has for its multilateral security cooperation, as they would reduce its scopefor influence and potentially provide a backstop for continued American influence,but there is also a lack of belief about the practical prospects of such proposals in theregion. Chinese representatives at the APC conference held in Australia in Decemberfelt that it was unlikely to develop in any way other than as a modest reform ofexisting processes and as such would not be of particular concern or indeed interest.34

In summary, China’s considerable engagement in the growing range of multilateralsecurity processes seeks to achieve several goals. It is part of a broader effort to shapethe international environment in ways that are most conducive to its domesticeconomic priorities. It is also an effort to expand Chinese influence and to subtlydilute that of the US. Third, it is also intended to help promote regional stability andprosperity and to deal with common new security problems. China’s attitude to theemerging security architecture encapsulates several key tensions that have becomeevident in Asia’s new multilateralism. On the one hand, Asian states seek tocooperate more to deal with complex multidimensional problems and almost allagree that security is, in many ways, a non-zero sum concept; on the other hand, in theprocess of cooperating, new tensions and incipient conflicts are permeating thesenascent processes making not only the achievement of core security business moredifficult but also creating new venues for rivalry and competition.35 As with thebroader process of security cooperation whereby analysts can be lulled into amisplaced belief that the region is secured through a complex array of institutions andprocesses that fosters a ‘we feeling’ and removes security dilemmas, there is a risk

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.

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that China’s wide-ranging participation in many institutions and processes may beseen as providing a sufficient basis for managing the broader security consequencesof China’s rise. Security cooperation in Asia is a messy affair; the stage is clutteredwith overlapping and often ineffective mechanisms in which there is little or nocoordination among the bodies. Most institutions have little impact upon participants’security policies and many of the more acute regional security concerns either cannotbe discussed or are simply resistant to multilateral endeavours. As such, China’sparticipation in security cooperation should be seen as an important signal of Chineseintent not to badly destabilize the region, but we should equally recognize that it doesnot constrain Chinese security policy, nor does it limit China’s room for manoeuvrein this sphere to any great degree.

III. China’s rise and the changing regional order

As many have pointed out, Asia’s remarkable economic and social transformation isbringing about a condition unparalleled in the modern era; simultaneously all of itsmajor powers will be powerful.36 In the past the region had only experienced onepower’s wealth and influence at any one time; when Japan was up, China was down.In the coming years this simultaneity will have significant implications for Asianstates and societies. Central to this, of course, has been China’s meteoric rise. As thispaper has shown, an initial aspect of this change can be discerned in the wide-rangingactivities being used to try to improve multilateral processes and to develop somekind of security architecture in the region.

More broadly, the structure of Asia’s international order is, like the power balancesand economic relations on which it rests, in a state of transition. The region appears tobe entering what can best be described as a hybrid system of order. Elements of theold remain, no more clearly than in the continuing dependence of regional states onthe forward projection of American military force to maintain regional stability, butoverlaying this continuity are hints of the new order. This is most evident in theemergence of new powers that are of regional and global significance, such as Chinaand India. Alongside the existing powers of America and Japan, this makes for a morecomplex division of power which, as many have predicted, is likely to increase thechances of regional instability as the vital interests of the powerful states overlap andintersect. The higher levels of friction between states, particularly when tied to theambition of emerging powers where nationalism is a potent political force, is likely tomake the maintenance of regional stability much more complex than it has been forthe past 30 years. A central part of this hybrid order is a pervasive sense of strategicuncertainty; in response to this, Asian states have undertaken what appear to bealmost contradictory steps. On the one hand, most have significantly increased theirdefence expenditure, but on the other they have launched a wide-ranging set ofmultilateral and cooperative security initiatives. Thus attempts to improve regionalsecurity through multilateral processes, including efforts to forge a new securityarchitecture, are an important part of this order. Most particularly they appear to be

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

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the means through which Asian states are exploring how to manage their securityinterests in complex times. For some states, a broad-based security architecture holdsout the promise of managing the larger patterns of order in a multipolar Asia. Othersdo not have such grand expectations. For them, multilateral processes are an adjunctto their traditional approaches, they are means through which the security costs thatare inevitably imposed in the shift to a new order can be reduced, but alone they arenot a foundation for regional peace and stability.

China is, in many ways, an exemplar of the dilemmas faced by Asian states.37 Itsimmediate preference is for the strategic status quo to remain in place indefinitely; yetthis cannot last. Change is already afoot but it is far from clear quite what a newpattern of order will look like. As a major power, China’s own policy choices willhave a significant impact on the emerging system,38 but it will by no means bedeterminative. America has made plain that it will continue to maintain a significantmilitary presence in the region for the long term, a development with which China isnot at all comfortable. China thus has to determine how to behave to encourage arestructuring of regional relations over the longer run that has the least short-termconsequences for the existing order. This, plus the host of new security challengesthat it faces, has prompted it to become heavily involved in multilateral securityprocesses. For China, there is no great interest in creating a grand architectural designnow or in the future, rather its participation in the efforts to improve multilateralsecurity cooperation are primarily intended to reduce the strategic costs to itself, andits regional interests, imposed by the on-going process of systemic change. Moreprecisely, Beijing does not want any multilateral mechanisms to limit its options onhigh priority issues such as Taiwan or the South China Sea. Security cooperation canhelp ameliorate tensions that may emerge at any given moment, but will not constrainChina on key policy areas.

The prospects of a regional security architecture emerging in the medium to longterm are unlikely at this point in time, at least if one understands an architecture toinvolve the purposive integration of distinct security mechanisms that are broughttogether to underpin the region’s international order. Given the ambivalenceof the major powers, the uncertainty if not hostility of ASEAN to any significantcompetition, and the continued lack of confidence in the security provided bymultilateral security processes, it is very hard to imagine such an institution coming topass. It follows from this that multilateral security processes, whether grand or morelimited in their scale, are not likely to be able to contain or to socialize China’s securitypolicy. While some argue that participation in the ARF has helped ameliorate aspectsof China’s foreign policy, this has been at the margins of importance. There is littleevidence to suggest that multilateral processes can offer significant degrees ofconfidence to Asian states in areas of high security priority, nor indeed that many seekthat kind of security good from multilateral processes. This is particularly the case forChinese policy-makers. The impact of security cooperation on the behaviour of Asian

37. For an assessment of how Australia has responded to this dilemma see Baogang He, ‘Politics ofaccommodation 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 SoutheastAsia’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(73), (2012), pp. 71–92.

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states has been, and will remain, limited and ambitions for these processes must reflectthis reality. This does not mean, however, that Asian states will be consigned to thedarkness of unconstrained power politics. Rather, multilateral security processes willcontinue to play an important part in promoting the region’s peace and stability, butthey will be only one part of the process. Alongside these mechanisms will be twoother sets of bilateral relations that will be of great significance: the bilateral relationsof the major powers, most particularly US–China relations; and America’s set ofbilateral alliance relationships. Indeed, it is in the interplay of these three componentsof the region’s order that the key to a stable region will be found.

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