China's Rise Entails New Regional Security Costs and Benefits

Recent tensions over maritime territorial disputes in the South China Sea have highlighted the lack of consensus over the existing security order in Asia. Understanding China’utes perception of the Asian protection order is crucial to find revolutionary policy solutions to enhance protection cooperation. So how does China conceptualise the current security order and just what do we know of its vision for the future?

China is sceptical of the current security order, especially of the presence of the United States in Eastern Asia and the US ‘centre and spoke’ alliance system. This scepticism drives China’s concept that Asians alone should assure security.

China sought to redefine the concept of security and its traditional emphasis on military capabilities in a speech at the ASEAN summit in 2002. The desire to do so had been driven by the increased interdependence associated with security threats from conventional, non-traditional, state and non-state sources.

The Un Charter and the Five Concepts of Peaceful Co-existence guide China’utes views of security and security cooperation. The ‘new security’ concept entails: relations of mutual respect, peaceful resolution of disputes, emphasis on non-traditional protection threats like terrorism, ‘preventing international invasions and safeguarding territorial integrity’ as well as going after mutual trust and mutual benefits.

The Chinese foreign ministry web site elaborates on these phrases. Shared trust and respect is understood in terms of respect for differences in each country’s domestic as well as political systems. Key to this concept is China’s emphasis on non-interference. Equal benefits translate as ‘win–win’ cooperation, where viewing all countries as equal members of the international community achieves common security goals. These principles form the basis of China’s vision for a multipolar world order as well as multilateral global governance institutions.

While these types of concepts are encompassed underneath the legal foundations of the UN Charter, many countries think that implicit in China’s emphasis on these values is a challenge to the existing international order.

How China’s foreign policy perspective views two important problems reinforces this suspicion: hegemony and inclusion. Chinese officials possess stated that in Asian countries ‘no country should make an effort to dominate security affairs or infringe upon legitimate rights as well as interests of other countries’, which ‘entrench[ing] a military alliance targeted at a third party is not conducive to maintain common security’. These comments take direct aim at the US alliance system. China does not believe in outsourcing security to any extra-regional country. Whether the United States will be a stakeholder in China’s security order is actually uncertain.

So how might China’s new security order work in practice? China cites the actual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) — which is designed to address the threats associated with terrorism, separatism and extremism — as an example of a ‘successful case of the new security concept’. This is primarily because since the development of the ‘Shanghai Five’ process in The early nineties, the model for the framework has been the same values articulated in the ‘new security concept’: non-alignment, non-confrontation and an avoidance of security policies directed at other countries or areas.

However, recent tussles over the disputed islands in the South China Sea have cast doubt on China’s commitment to these international policy principles. China’s threat of the use of force and pursuit of unilateral measures has led many to question its commitment to relations of mutual trust, benefit, equality and coordination as well as its commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes.

China’s ‘new security’ concept was reiterated with renewed enthusiasm at the Conference on Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) Summit in 2014. In conjunction, China proposed two new initiatives, the Asia Investment Infrastructure Bank and the Maritime Silk Road. China’s initiatives of making multilateral institutions signify a gradual implementation of its foreign policy goals and values.

However, this has begun to change. Chinese foreign coverage pronunciations now have a grand strategic nature, with long-term interests at stake, and a new vision for regional security and economic wellbeing. Chinese leaders now seek to strive for a ‘common future for Asia’ based on the principles and values enshrined in the ‘new security’ idea.

As China’s stake in the international order deepens, both the costs and benefits of greater wedding increase. By articulating a multilateral concept of security and pursuing multilateral co-operation, China is gradually recognising the challenges of being a ‘excellent power’.

China’s foreign policy approach will test the defenders of the present liberal international order. But it is integral that states which are anxious about China’s rise seek to understand how China conceptualises security and to support its peaceful development.

Understanding China’s foreign policy perspective is republished with permission from East Asia Forum