1

2

This paper is submitted for the Global Emerging Voices (GEV) fellowship program. GEV was established in 2011 to foster dialogue among young leaders from a plurality of academic, policy-making and business circles in Europe and across the Asia-Pacific region, who share a commitment to a nuanced understanding of the transforming global order in light of China’s re-emergence. Each year, 12 GEV fellows are invited to spend two weeks in Berlin, Brussels, and Torino to engage in workshops, role-plays, scenario-building exercises, and closed-door discussions with senior EU policy-makers, strategic analysts, opinion and business leaders, focusing on Europe’s peculiar engagement with China as a global actor. In Torino, fellows take part in the TOChina program, one of Europe’s premiere yearly salons assessing the current political and economic dynamics in the PRC through debates with China’s most committed intellectuals and international experts. The GEV fellowship progam is run by the Torino World Affairs Institute (www.twai.it) in cooperation with Mercator Stiftung, the Australian National University, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

3

China as the Power, ASEAN as the Leader: Philippine Perceptions on Regionalism in Asia

Andrea Chloe Wong

The trajectory of Asian regionalism is expected to reflect various uncertainties over the growing clout of China and the rising influence of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). With its increasing economic and military power, China’s future intent as a regional stakeholder becomes ASEAN’s growing concern. As it plays a leading role in managing regional affairs, ASEAN is apprehensive of China’s reemergence that could undermine the development of regional cooperation. Meanwhile, as a country faced with contending issues with China, the Philippines is cooperative yet cautious towards regionalism with an ascendant China in Asia. At the same time, as one of the principal members of ASEAN, the Philippines projects a sense of guarded optimism towards the management of regional issues and the prospects of cooperation in the region. China on Asian Regionalism China’s participation in Asian regionalism has been widely discussed in recent years. On the one hand, some Chinese observersare suspicious ofthe increasingregionalism because of the possible decline of state sovereignty. Moreover, they view this development in the region as a way for smaller states—such as ASEAN members—to “gang up on China”and for major powers—such as the United States and Japan—to set limits on China’s scope formaneuver.1On the other hand, some Chinese analysts regard regionalism as an importantavenue for China to strengthen economic cooperation and to manage transnational security threats in the region.2 Despite the divergence, both perspectives reveal China’s serious regard for its national interests and how these will be affected in its participation on regionalism in Asia. However in recent years, China has been actively participating in the development of regionalism in Asiadespite its initial misgivings, recognizing that it has become the trend in international affairs. The Chinese government has since realized that the country shares

1Hirano,Ko (2009). China Wary of Hatoyama’s East Asian Commuity,The Japan Times, 3 October 2009. Available at:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/10/03/national/china-wary-of-hatoyamas-east-asian-community/#.UbabvEqouho. 2Zhao, Suisheng (2011). China’s Approaches toward Regional Cooperation in East Asia: Motivations and

Calculations, Journal of Contemporary China, 20, pp. 53-67. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10670564.2011.520846.

4

common interests and concerns with many of its neighbors, and that through regionalism, China can cooperate with them and find collective solutions. Moreover, China’s amiable reception towards regionalism is brought about by the relationship-based interaction and the low-level of institutionalization led by ASEAN. The legendary ASEAN Way that emphasizes consultations, dialogue, and consensus perfectly suits China’s preference. China favors this informal and inclusive style of engagement because it is wary of any legally binding resolutions that may infringe on its sovereignty and limit its potential to advance its national interests. Because of these, China has become supportive of multilateral cooperation in Asia. China as the Power With China’s rapid domestic development, its foreign policy reflects a new found confidence that capitalizes on its material wealth, diplomatic influence, and military strength. Such foreign policy is very much evident in China’s behavior in East Asia, which is viewed by many analysts as the “core of its grand strategy.” This grand strategy ultimately projects China’s regional clout. Politically, China pursues multilateral diplomacy to mute threat perceptions and to convince other countries of the benefits of engaging with it. The Chinese government also employs bilateral diplomacy, particularly on important security issues to maximize its relative power and influence.Economically, China takes advantage of its economic leverage to gain political concessions and to nurture relations with diverse trading partners and sources of foreign investment.3 Militarily, China continues to modernize its armed forces to project military preparedness against any domestic and foreign threats to its security. In particular, China’s power projection in the region was explicitly manifested in its economic clout. During the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998, the Chinese government decided not to devalue its currency and to draw on its extensive foreign exchange reserves to assist distressed nations in the region. The use of its economic leverage was taken to new heights when China signed a free trade agreement with ASEAN in 2002 that eventually took effect in 2010. Although this was entirely in keeping with broader developments in the region, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) is viewed as a “political confidence building” initiated by the Chinese government. The fact that China was willing to give ASEAN an “early harvest” of significant tariff reduction and unilateral trade liberalization, as well as access to the rapidly expanding Chinese domestic

3Beeson, Mark (2013). Can China Lead?Third World Quarterly, 34, pp. 233-250. Available at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01436597.2013.775781.

5

market highlighted the country’s economic weight and the costs it was willing to bear to cultivate good relations with Southeast Asia.4 Interestingly, while China utilizes its extensive power and influence in the region, its foreign policy reveals a strange irony between its “great” ability and “weak” mentality. Deng Xiaoping’s famous dictum that Chinese foreign policy should “adopt a low profile and never take the lead” is a good example of China’s consciousness of not only a “weak” but also a “great” power. Though China is still a “weak great” power, it is on track to becoming a “strong great” power.5 However, what is already certain is that China is a regional power with enough diplomatic, economic, and military resources to advance its foreign policy agenda. ASEAN on an Ascendant China With Chinese power and influence becoming more pronounced in the region, ASEAN has become more circumspect and cautious about the giant in its neighborhood. The organization welcomes the increasing economic opportunities and concessions, particularly in terms of trade and investments, which China provides for the benefit of the developing economies of its members. At the same time, it is wary of the increasing assertiveness of China, particularly on issues related to territorial claims and border disputes, which involves some of its members in the region.

As it copes with an active China, ASEAN has employed several approaches to effectively deal with its powerful neighbor. Through the ASEAN+1 process, the organization has brought together its small member states as a collective bargaining institution in its strategic hedging against China. ASEAN has also enmeshed the country in various avenues of regional institutions, multilateral trade agreements, and security exchanges.6 This is intended to embed China through a “complex engagement strategy that is characterized by a multiplicity of interactions – economic, political, and social; informal and formal; bilateral and multilateral – on a variety of issues.”7

4Chin, Gregory and Richard Stubbs (2011). China, Regional Institution-Building and the China-ASEAN Free Trade

Area,Review of International Political Economy, 13, pp. 277-298. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09692291003762548. 5 Ting, Wai (2000). From Weak-Great to Strong-Great: Review and Reflections of 50 years of Chinese Foreign

Policies,China; Fifty Years in Review, ed. Wong Yiu Chung, pp. 5-7. 6Goh, Evelyn (2005). Great Powers and Southeast Asian Regional Security Strategies: Omni-Enmeshment,

Balancing, and Hierarchical Order,Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies Singapore, pp. 1-16. Available at: http://dr.ntu.edu.sg/bitstream/handle/10220/4481/RSIS-WORKPAPER_84.pdf. 7Ba, Alice (2006). Who’s Socializing Whom? Complex Engagement in Sino-ASEAN Relations,The Pacific Review, 19,

pp. 157-179. Available at: http://www.udel.edu/poscir/faculty/ABa/BaWhosSocializing.pdf.

6

Recently, ASEAN has alsoenmeshed China in the habits of good regional citizenship by forging severalagreements with it. In 2002, the two parties established the ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership for Peace and Prosperity and signed the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. In 2003, China signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) that aims to promote regional peace and stability.All these agreements are nonbinding, which are in accordance to the principle and practice of ASEAN and thus committed China to very little. Nevertheless, ASEAN has effectively convinced China on the merits and comfort of the organization’s processes that encouraged the country to shift its behavior from a norm-avoiding to a norm-affirming one.8

Indeed, ASEAN’s complex engagement strategy has been quite effective in persuading China on the value to be found in maintaining a stable regional order and in establishing good relations with Southeast Asia. However, such actions in fact reveal not only ASEAN’s amity, but also its concerns on China’s growing influence in the region.

Ultimately, the danger of a deeper engagement strategy is that the higher ASEAN members’ degree of interdependence with China, the more vulnerable they are to any pressures or tensions that may occur in the relationship. The fear is that as China becomes more comfortable in the regional cooperative arrangement, it will try to assert its full influence. And because of this, there are already lingering doubts within ASEAN about the long-term consequences of its engagement approach towards China. Thus, ASEAN continues to be vigilant towards the uncertainties behind China’s future conduct in the region.

ASEAN as the Leader

Meanwhile, as China becomes more at ease with ASEAN, it has all the more preferred the organization to be at the center of regional cooperation. Despite China’s capacity to dominate regional affairs, the Chinese government opted to throw its support for ASEAN to be at the driver’s seatin steering regional affairs. This is supposed to be in line with China’s “weak great power” attitude of “maintaining a low profile and never claiming leadership.” But for some analysts, this is essentially a polite fiction,designed to “assuage the fears and massage the egos of Southeast Asia’s leaders because in reality, China could be more assertive to its less powerful neighbors.”9

Moreover, China’s support for ASEAN’s leadership is a strategic move to contain Japan’s influence in the region. It acknowledges ASEAN as the driving force because it does not want to

8Jones, David Martin and Michael L.R. Smith (2007). Making Process, Not Progress: ASEAN and the Evolving East

Asian Regional Order,International Security, 32, pp. 148-184. Available at: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/isec.2007.32.1.148. 9Beeson, Mark (2010). Asymmetrical Regionalism: China, Southeast Asia and Uneven Development,East Asia, 27,

pp. 329-343. Available at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12140-010-9121-0.

7

accede to Japan—its closest rival fraught with historical baggage. Clearly, China opted to concede to a group of small states to balance the power of a big competitor in the region. ASEAN is therefore thrust into assuming a de facto leadership role in the region. However, despite being the “driving force by default,” the organization is not powerful enough to transform regional cooperation in a deeper level and in more substantivescale. For in reality, the more critical factor that shall pushregionalismforward is essentially the cooperative relationships of the bigger players in the region, especially the relations between China and Japan.10Yet for the purpose of containing each other’s influence, these regional powers will continue to honor ASEAN’s centrality and respect its leadership role.

Because of this, ASEAN has taken up the challenge of building up its credibility to effectively manage regional affairs and objectively moderate great power relations.It has since bonded more quickly and tightly for fear of being torn apart by these regional powers, which might eventually push itself into irrelevance.Thus, in order to strengthen its leadership position, ASEAN firmly maintains to chair meetings and initiate activities with its dialogue partnerswithin the context of ASEAN+3, East Asia Summit (EAS), and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). Asymmetrical Regionalism between China and ASEAN However, despite its widely accepted leadership, ASEAN isstill insecure of its position, as major players in the region impose their economic weight and political influence on its small members. Evidently, the crux of the matter is the asymmetric regionalism that represents the different sizes, capacities, and orientations of the countries in the region. Ultimately, these differences represent “a major test of the regional actors’ willingness and ability to cooperate in achieving common objectives.”11The asymmetry in power relations between China and ASEAN highlight thisvital challenge in regional cooperation. Though it is an assembly of ten small states, ASEAN feels anxioustowards a more powerful China.Despite the group’s collective potential, it suffers from its loose integration that sometimes results in its inability to act collectively, particularly on important regional matters. Add to this dilemma is the varied national interests of ASEAN membersthat often constrain them from fulfilling their regional obligations. This consequently limits ASEAN from having a unified position to gain effective leverage in negotiating with Chinaon regional issues.

Recently, there have been critical times when national interests trump over collective ones. The South China Sea issue is a particularly salient case. While all ASEAN states have a basic interest

10Ye, Shulan (2010).China’s Regional Policy in East Asia and Its Characteristics, China Policy Institute Discussion

Paper, 66, pp. 1-31. Available at: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cpi/documents/discussion-papers/discussion-paper-66-china-regional-policy-shulan-ye.pdf. 11

See above for Beeson, Mark (2010).

8

in encouraging Chinese restraint, not all of them have territorial claims in the area. At the same time, most states are wary of antagonizing China that might negatively impinge on their national interests, particularly their economic welfare.China can take advantage of these realities in ASEAN, as it simultaneously engages with the organization’s members through bilateral negotiations on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea issue, in which it would dominate as the larger power.

This reality was very much evident during the 2012 ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Cambodia when there was no Joint Communiqué issued after the meeting. This isbecause the Cambodian chair did not want to include any references to the territorial conflicts in the South China Sea. As a non-claimant state, Cambodia rejected the proposed references that were seen as merely the Philippines and Vietnam’s bilateral issues with China on their territorial claims, and therefore should not be mentioned in the ASEAN Joint Communiqué. And as a major recipient of Chinese investments and trade, Cambodia was viewed as protecting its domestic interests at the expense of regional cooperation.And in this case, Cambodia’s “neutral” stance on the South China Sea essentially favored China’s position to the detriment of ASEAN solidarity.

In effect, the differences in the ASEAN members’ level of involvement and strategic interests in the territorial dispute have left the organization divided and polarized. This reality made ASEAN more vulnerable to Chinese pressures that ultimately benefited the country’s position in the South China Sea. For its part, China seems to have used its “growing economic power to press Cambodia into the awkward position of rebuffing its ASEAN neighbors on one of the region’s most important security concerns.”12Indeed, as this case reveals, while ASEAN plays the supposed leadership role in the region, China’s “invisible hands” revealed its dominating power.

And because of such vulnerabilities, ASEAN continues to harbor anxietyover China’s future intentions and actions towards regionalism, regardless of how the Chinese play its cards. Indeed, “China’s behavior will always be subject to interpretation and ASEAN may always hold it suspect.”13This view is reinforced with the lingering perceptions of China’s sense of regional entitlement due to its imperial history, geographic enormity, political clout, and power asymmetry relative to ASEAN. The confluence of these factors shape ASEAN’s perception of an increasingly confident China that is capable of forcefully advancing its vast interests in the region. Indeed, China’s behavior over the South China Sea basically confirmed ASEAN’s worst suspicions.

This anxietybecomes more evident as ASEAN recognizes the fact that China’s participation in multilateral cooperation is fundamentally a rational self-serving strategy, rather than a policy of

12Bower, Ernest (2012).China Reveals its Hand on Phnom Penh,East Asia Forum, 28 July 2012. Available

at:http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2012/07/28/china-reveals-its-hand-on-asean-in-phnom-penh/. 13

Morada, Noel (2004). ASEAN and the Rise of China: Engaging, While Fearing, An Emerging Regional Power, in The Rise of China and a Changing East Asian Order, ed. KokubunRyosei.

9

self-sacrificing generosity or goodwill. And because of this, ASEAN is even more conscious of China’sstrategy that it will participate in institutional mechanisms where it can achieve its national interests, but can directly use its influence as an option when it wants to directly realize its goals, especially as China’s power continues to grow.14

Perspectives from the Philippines As a member of ASEAN, the Philippinesalso shares the organization’s wariness and optimism regarding China’s increasing role in the region. Asa developing country in Asia, it considers China as a source of economic opportunities. And as a rival claimant in the South China Sea, it regards China as a source of its security concerns. While an upbeat perception based on robust bilateral trade can gradually offset any skeptical view, it merely takes a few instance of Chinese encroachment on Philippine maritime territories for the Philippines to revert back to its suspicion and mistrust towards China. With the increasing regionalism in Asia, the Philippines iscarefully observing how this development will impact China’s future conduct in the region.Itacknowledges the vital role ASEAN plays in engaging China to induce cooperative behavior from it. However, given the varied interests of each ASEAN members in its relations with China, the Philippines is uncertain how effective the organization will be in the long term in dealing with the Chinese. At the same time, the countryis alsowary of how China appears to be more willing to use its strengths to promote its national interests in the region—either throughfriendly considerations or forceful assertions. This cynicism increases, asthe Philippines recognizes that ASEAN and China’s regard fortheir national interests reveal how regionalism merely constrains non-cooperative behavior and does not actually alter the interestsfrom which such behavior springs.15

Yet despitethese uncertainties, the Philippines has to contend with cautious optimism the growing regionalism in Asia with a powerful China and a cordial ASEAN.It ishopeful that, with theirincreasing collaborative ventures, both parties shall endeavor to push for a regional environment that will effectively minimize tensions and advance further cooperation. Being the stronger power, much restraint is expected from China as it develops its economic and military strength. And being the central leader, greater solidarity is expected from ASEAN as it manages the political, economic, and securitydevelopments in the region.

14See above for Beeson, Mark (2010).

15Johnston, Alastair Iain and Paul Evans (1999). China’s Engagement with Multilateral Security Institutions, in

Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power, eds. Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert Ross.

10