Keys to the Evolution of Regional Order in East Asia

With the end of the post-Cold War era, the world political center has been transitioning from the Middle East and Europe to the Asia Pacific. This is one of the most important trends of recent times, and is reflected in America’s rebalancing strategy, which aims to shift the American global strategic center of gravity from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific. As East Asia becomes the focus of the United States’ global strategy, the regional order will subsequently evolve from the post-Cold War era to a new era. While much attention has been given to questions about the global implications of the US-China relationship, it is the regional order of East Asia that presents the most significant challenge of our time. The future of the East Asian regional order will be shaped by interactions between ASEAN, China, and the United States. As fundamental questions about the nature of this order are addressed, US-China relations will be key.

The United States, China, ASEAN and the Future East Asian Order

We must begin by asking, can East Asia really accept China’s rise? As China’s economy and national power grows, American and East Asian countries have expressed again and again that they welcome a peaceful, prosperous China. In reality, this is not always entirely the case. Objectively speaking, it will take several years to fully accept China’s rise. It is understandable that the US and some other countries harbor strategic suspicions towards a rising China. Particularly on issues like the East China Sea and the South China Sea territorial sovereignty disputes, this suspicion translates into a tendency to criticize only China, regardless of what other countries are doing. Criticizing China is beginning to be a conditioned reflex for some countries. Through this, the US and some East Asian countries demonstrate that they aren’t truly comfortable with a rising China. This discomfort leads them to have a certain bias that shapes their perceptions of China’s actions.

Next, we must ask, what status should China have in the East Asian order? Finding the right role for a rising China to play will be one of the keys to the success of the future of regional order. Based on its economic rise and its comprehensive national strength, China will take on increased responsibilities and provide more public goods in regional cooperation in the future. China will increasingly put forward its own ideas about regional affairs and will play a greater role. What role should China take on during this transition? Regional leader? Facilitator? Something else? If leadership means undertaking more responsibility and providing more public goods, as China satisfies these criteria, will the region recognize China’s leadership status, or even regional predominance? In the domain of economics, this problem is in fact not very far away from us. These questions are also beginning to be posed in the political and security domains.

Many Chinese scholars are reluctant to bring up these questions because once discussed it will be understood that China has the ambition to seek regional hegemony. (In the Chinese view, “hegemony” is a very negative concept to describe a country’s behavior.) In my view, China does not seek regional hegemony. Instead, a leadership based on responsibility can be completely distinguished from hegemony. China has already begun to develop a strategy to take on more responsibilities, for example, through the Silk Road strategy (OBOR), building the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and proposing the 2+7 initiative in Southeast Asia. Developing this kind of leadership is a very important issue to China.

Just as critical as the future role of China in regional order is the question of the United States. Chinese scholars like criticizing America’s rebalancing strategy in the Asia Pacific region, and often think of it as adding fuel to the fire in regional hotspot issues. However, whether you like it or not, the United States has been successfully involved in the affairs of the Asia Pacific region and has effectively become a member of East Asia. The future order in East Asia cannot exclude the United States. Consequently, what role America should play in East Asia is also a key component of the regional order. According to the United States itself, its fundamental purpose in the “rebalance” strategy is to shape the regional order and pursue regional leadership. The United States has an extensive alliance system in East Asia—Japan, Korea, Philippines, Thailand and more. It combines this network with its predominant security position to dominate regional economic cooperation—see for example, the TPP trade framework. How should the United States play a role? What role should the US alliance system play? What is the leadership that the United States seeks? What will happen to the area? These also are key to build the East Asian order successfully.

Finally, we must ask about the role of ASEAN norms in the future of the East Asian order. During the post-Cold War era, one of the major features of East Asian cooperation was ASEAN’s development and improvement of the system of regional norms and rules. When we talk about China’s economic rise, we should not ignore the rise of ASEAN norms and rules. For example, the “ASEAN way” and “10+X” cooperation framework, these norms have become the main framework for East Asia cooperation and diplomacy. At present, although the United States and China have their own regional strategies, ASEAN is still the dominant source of regional consensus. In the future, how the norms of ASEAN and ASEAN Cooperation Frameworks can contribute will be a key factor in constructing the regional order.

US-China Relations: The central Task for Building a New Order

Up until now, the separation of economic cooperation from security cooperation has been an important feature of the East Asian order. However, with the relative changes in national power among the regional countries—including China and US—economic cooperation will be increasingly dependent on security cooperation. If a reasonable regional security order cannot be constructed, the separation of politics and economics will slow the pace of regional economic cooperation.

Let us take the East Asia free trade negotiation process as an example. We often say that East Asia cooperation processes are separated from each other: APEC, 10+1, 10+3, free trade negotiations between China, Japan and South Korea, TPP, RCEP and so on. Cooperation mechanisms are mutually isolated, fragmented, but also overlapping. When we look at these trade negotiations, we see that most of them are affected by geopolitical considerations: competition between trade partnerships is undergirded by and reflective of security competition. Consequently, if we plan to integrate the whole region in a free trade arrangement, we have to establish a reasonable regional security order. Without this, no regional economic order can achieve deep integration. Clearly, the Sino-US relationship is of great importance here. It determines the future of the East Asian security order, thus the effort to cultivate positive US-China interaction is key to the creation of deeper of economic ties in East Asia, and ultimately to the establishment of a deeper regional order.

The concept of the new style of major power relations between China and the US was put forward by China several years ago. From China’s perspective, it is aimed at solving the “tragedy of great power politics” which might spring from the security dilemma between the US and the rising China. To realize this vision, the first task is to build a cooperative security order in East Asia. This would entail addressing the potential security problems presented by Japan’s military and the Japan-US alliance, East Asian maritime security issues, the Korean peninsula, the Taiwan question and other issues. The successful construction of the East Asian security order is necessary for the integration of various economic governance and trade cooperation mechanism in East Asia. For example, if TPP and RCEP will ever be integrated, the most likely path would be in the framework of APEC. However, many US scholars are suspicious of this initiative, and there is still much work to do in the future.

If China and US are to realize a “new model” of major power relations, they must take the 10+8 (ASEAN+US, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, and New Zealand) as the main framework to establish a security order in East Asia. They must integrate the America alliance system into a broader East Asian order, overcome security competition between China and the United States and work to manage and resolve regional hotspot issues such as maritime safety and the maritime territorial disputes. The path to tackling these difficult problems and establishing a security order in East Asia should be envisioned as a framework of “Sino-US cooperation + ASEAN norms.”

Dr. Jiao Shixin is Associate Professor at the Institute of International Relations, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He is also currently Visiting Scholar at the Sigur Center for Asia Studies at George Washington University.