Who's socializing whom? Complex engagement in Sino-ASEAN relations

The Pacific Review, Vol. 19 No. 2 June 2006: 157–179

Who’s socializing whom? Complexengagement in Sino-ASEAN relations

Alice D. Ba

Abstract This article draws on constructivist approaches to explore processes ofsocialization in the context of evolving relations between China and the Associationof Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Constructivist discussions have challengedtraditional accounts of socialization; however, left under-examined are the processesby which social learning and social change take place. This article contributes tothe theoretical discussion with its examination of ASEAN’s regional engagementprocesses. It treats ASEAN states’ ‘complex engagement’ of China as an exercisein argumentative persuasion, which seeks common agreement via a deliberative,non-coercive process. In contrasting ASEAN’s particular style of engagement withother models that emphasize more coercive and utilitarian strategies of persuasion,the article draws attention to how particular kinds of interaction may facilitate so-cial learning, as well as the conditions that may make social learning more likely.Particular attention is paid to the roles played by power asymmetries, uncertainty,and different kinds of engagement (mutual and interactive versus closed and unidi-rectional) in social learning, as well as the importance of viewing socialization as aprocess that involves different stages.

Keywords China; ASEAN; Southeast Asia; engagement; socialization; construc-tivism.

Introduction

This article explores questions of socialization in the context of China’sevolving relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN) and the latter’s engagement of China over the last fifteen years.

Alice D. Ba is Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science andInternational Relations, University of Delaware, Newark, USA. Her publications and researchhave focused on ASEAN–China relations and Asia’s evolving regionalisms. Her co-editedvolume Contending Perspectives on Global Governance is published by Routledge.

Address: Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Delaware,Newark, DE 19711, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

The Pacific ReviewISSN 0951-2748 print/ISSN 1470-1332 online C© 2006 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journalsDOI: 10.1080/09512740500473163

158 The Pacific Review

Improvements in relations have been dramatic, especially when comparedto the hostility that characterized relations previously. Most significant havebeen the changes in China’s policies towards regional multilateralism. Thisanalysis looks to constructivist arguments about social context and processto shed additional light on the conditions and processes of social change;however, constructivists’ discussions of the social processes by which actorscome to be transformed need clearer elaboration.

Sino-ASEAN relations offer a good opportunity to illuminate some of‘those elements of process and interaction missing in more sweeping ac-counts of social learning’ (Checkel 2001: 560). In this relationship, ASEANstates, individually and collectively, have emphasized an engagement ap-proach to China that involves important assumptions about the socializingproperties of engagement processes and regular interaction. Best describedas complex engagement, ASEAN’s approach is characterized by a multiplic-ity of interactions – economic, political, and social; informal and formal;bilateral and multilateral – on a variety of issues. Most important, ASEANstates also tend to see their interactions and exchanges with China more interms of an ongoing negotiation of relations, less predetermined interests ofthe kind emphasized by traditional approaches of International Relations(IR). Put another way, ASEAN states hope that engagement processes canpersuade China to respect ASEAN norms and to see ASEAN in more co-operative terms.

This article begins with a brief sketch of the ways in which the discipline ofIR has tended to understand and explain socialization. Drawing on construc-tivist insights, this analysis then turns its focus to Sino-ASEAN relations todraw attention to some under-explored aspects and dynamics of socializationprocesses. It describes complex engagement as an example of ‘argumenta-tive persuasion’, that is, ‘a social process of interaction that involves changingattitudes about cause and effect in the absence of overt coercion’ (Checkel2001: 562). Finally, the article offers some preliminary conclusions about theevolution of Sino-ASEAN relations and how different conditions and pro-cesses affect social learning, as well as suggestions for future directions ofinquiry.

Constructivist arguments about socialization

One of the problems in discussing socialization is the impreciseness of theterm and lack of agreement about both its mechanisms and the changes as-sociated with it. Most theorists agree that socialization involves convergenceof some kind or modifications to behavior patterns such that an actor ‘fitsin’ to a larger community (Haas 1965; Johnston 2001; Waltz 1979; Wendt1999), but aside from that general point there is little agreement. Recently,constructivist arguments that socialization involves more than the conver-gence of behavior and interests but also social identities and worldviews havechallenged neorealist and contractual accounts. Not only do constructivists

A. D. Ba: Who’s socializing whom? 159

argue that identities and interests are more fluid than described by other ap-proaches but they also differ on the mechanisms of socialization. Rather thanattributing changes in behavior to shifting material incentives, constructivistshighlight how new interpretations and changing social interactions can alsoproduce important behavioral changes. In other words, systemic change maybe a function of ‘social learning’, whereby actors gain ‘the capacity and moti-vation . . . to manage and even transform reality by changing their beliefs ofthe material and social world and their identities’ (Adler and Barnett 1998:43–4). For constructivists, understanding social change requires attentionbe paid to the types of interaction between actors, and the intersubjectivemeanings that they have attached to their associations and interactions.

Despite their interest in social learning and changing identities, construc-tivist discussions on socialization have been surprisingly limited, however.In particular, Jeffrey Checkel observes that constructivists give insufficientattention to the process of social learning, as well as the conditions underwhich such learning might take place. According to Checkel, not only doconstructivists tend to ‘bracket . . . the intervening processes of social inter-action’ by which actors arrive at conclusions about particular norms, ideas,and relationships but they also display a surprising tendency towards an indi-vidualist ontology to describe social processes (Checkel 2001: 554). In thesediscussions, one group of actors sets out to convince another to comply withcertain norms, but almost always the process is described in unidirectionalterms where the target of socialization activities is the only site of change.Far less attention is given to how actions by the target actor can also changethe context of interactions and the group or actors whose community it isthat the targeted actor is being socialized into. In other words, socialization isoften treated as a unidirectional, rather than interactive or mutual, process.

Constructivist discussions on socialization have also offered only limiteddiscussions on how power disparities may inform and condition socializa-tion processes. Questions of power are especially interesting in the case ofASEAN’s efforts to ‘socialize’ China since it is precisely because ASEANis a set of weaker powers that there is such skepticism about its ability toconvince a larger power like China to conform to ASEAN norms. Such skep-ticism reflects an important utilitarian logic contained in much of the IR lit-erature and that can be seen in the particular emphasis given to hegemonicpower as a socializing force (Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990). The focus onhegemonic-led socialization is evident also in some constructivist accounts.Most notably, Adler and Barnett, in their discussion of security communities,posit that ‘power can be a magnet’ that attracts other actors, and convincesthem to rethink old ideas, practices, and roles because of the benefits derivedfrom associating with that power (Adler and Barnett 1998: 39–40; see alsoFarrell 2002: 70–1). Of those who draw on sociological approaches, Schim-melfennig may be most explicit in arguing that a more powerful ‘socializer’is a condition of successful socialization. As he argues in his discussion of EUexpansion, ‘Asymmetry between East and West is the structural prerequisite


for the most pervasive feature of international socialization of the NewEurope’ because Western Europe’s ‘control of legitimacy as well as ma-terial resources enables the West to apply, and makes the East susceptibleto, political conditionality’ (Schimmelfennig 2001: 111; emphasis added).

Not surprisingly, then, little is said about the ability of smaller powerarrangements to socialize or modify the behavior of larger ones. Nor is itunexpected to find little optimism about ASEAN’s ability to elicit coopera-tive behavior from China (Leifer 1996; Lim 1998). By this utilitarian logic,ASEAN and ASEAN’s ways are made less attractive because ASEAN hasless to offer China in the way of material inducements, thus making changeless likely.

And yet the last fifteen years have seen a marked improvement in rela-tions that suggest qualitative changes in relations. Indeed, Chinese views ofASEAN have especially come a long way since it first branded the groupan anti-Chinese, anti-communist alliance back in 1967. Similarly, on theASEAN side, interactions have done much to ease some of the suspicionsthat once defined its relations with China. To be sure, important problems re-main and deeper trust is far from assured, but developments also suggest thata decade of engagement has produced an important stabilization of expec-tations, even some common understandings, about their respective roles, aswell as a new appreciation for their relations. Similarly, though there remainkey differences on specific issues, the 1990s has also seen growing agreementon questions of East Asian and Asian-Pacific security, at very least on howthose questions are best approached. Such ‘mundane accomplishments’ (toquote Yuan Foong Khong) are more significant to the long-term stabilityof regional order than most headline-making cooperative ventures (Khong1997: 291).

While the continued improvement of China–ASEAN relations will be acontingent process, recent developments nevertheless call for closer inspec-tion of the particular dynamics of their relations, interactions, and negoti-ations (material and social). In particular, Checkel argues that more delib-erative processes involving mutual exchange will be more likely to producesocial change than processes based on ‘lectures’ and ‘demands’ (Checkel2001: 562–3). Specifically, the form of ASEAN’s engagement – informal,non-confrontational, open-ended and mutual – may play an important partin persuading China to rethink its ASEAN relations, to look upon ASEANin a more positive light, and to be more responsive to ASEAN concerns.

Complex engagement as argumentative persuasion

Complex engagement has formed a centerpiece of ASEAN’s response toChina’s growing influence since the ending of their de facto alignment againstVietnam in 1991. It is characterized by non-coercive, open exchanges at mul-tiple levels and over multiple issue areas; it is the strategic pursuit of cooper-ative relations based on common understandings, as much interdependence.


At a time of growing Chinese influence and uncertain US policies, ASEANstates have increasingly looked to bilateral and multilateral engagement notonly to create a constraining web of interdependence but also to persuadeChina to think differently and less confrontationally about regional securityand its relations with the ASEAN states.

The process by which actors learn to think differently about cause andeffect, means and ends, indeed self and other, however, is not well exploredby constructivists. Instead, as Checkel discusses, it has been the contractualtheorists that have been clearest in specifying how actors come to particulardecisions about norms and compliance (Checkel 2001). The mostly legal-istic and coercive processes that they emphasize, however, do not describeASEAN’s regional processes or its particular style of informal, non-bindingengagement well. Characterized by a multiplicity of interactions at multiplelevels and across different issues areas, complex engagement’s holistic ap-proach also contrasts with the focus of contractual accounts on issue-specificregimes and artificially parceled relations.

ASEAN’s engagement of China is also not simply about creating inter-dependence or necessarily democratic change as often emphasized in moreliberal accounts of engagement (Metzger and Myers 1998). Rather, complexengagement also aims to create cooperative relations by finding new areasof agreement.1 The key point about those areas of agreement is that theyare shared; they need not be ‘liberal’ for them to provide the basis for stable,cooperative relations. As some have noted, so-called illiberal values can alsoprovide the basis for community (Kivimaki 2001). Finally, complex engage-ment involves an ongoing, two-way process that is interactive and mutual inits flows of influence.

In that complex engagement emphasizes multiple channels of interactionon a variety of issues, it does have some important similarities with Nye’s andKeohane’s neoliberal conception of ‘complex interdependence’ (Keohaneand Nye 1977, 1998: 81–95). However, I emphasize the term engagement asa way to underscore that what is taking place is an action and interaction,less a condition or situation. Where complex interdependence tends to de-scribe a material situation by which a state’s actions may be constrained bya complex constellation of economic, military, and welfare interests,2 com-plex engagement refers to a social, interactive process aimed at transforminghow actors conceive themselves in relation to others. As such, complex en-gagement is not passive, but active; not static but dynamic. Most important,complex engagement is a process, not simply a policy outcome (Johnstonand Evans 1999: 236).

Put another way, complex engagement is an active search for points ofconsensus towards persuading another to change its attitudes and/or beliefsabout a particular subject, issue, or relationship. As such, complex engage-ment can thus be seen as an example of ‘argumentative persuasion’ – thatis, a ‘process of active persuasion and recruitment’ (Adler 1997: 319–63) –described by constructivists as one mechanism of social learning. As Thomas


Risse explains, argumentative behavior is like strategic behavior in that it isgoal oriented; however, instead of trying to attain one’s fixed preferences,the goal is to reach a ‘reasoned consensus’ about the matter at hand (Risse2000: 7). In this case, the goal of engagement processes is less about gettingspecific goods or concessions than it is to reach agreement about regionalroles and relations.

Sino-ASEAN relations can also shed light on conditions, as much theprocesses, that may make social change more likely. Discussions by Checkeland Risse provide some starting points for discussion. Both highlight, forexample, how a situation of uncertainty can provide a favorable conditionfor social learning. Risse adds that the existence of a ‘common lifeworld pro-vided by a high degree of international institutionalization in the respectiveissue area’ (Risse 2000) can also facilitate social learning. However, in caseslike China–ASEAN relations in the early 1990s, where there is neither acommon lifeworld nor any significant degree of institutionalization, activistagents can play a critical role in the learning process. Risse draws especialattention to the ‘conscious efforts by actors to construct such a commonlifeworld through narratives that enable them to communicate in a mean-ingful way’. In this case, elites interested in recasting relations in a differentway played a central role in making possible and more likely the more co-operative relations that exist between China and ASEAN today.3

At the same time, in ASEAN, there is also recognition that influencemay also work in the opposite direction; that is, ASEAN states may hopeto ‘socialize’ China to regional norms, but in their interactions they wouldbe changed as well. Especially given the emphasis placed on power as anattracting and socializing force, the power differentials that characterize theSino-ASEAN relationship make the socialization questions posed above allthe more interesting in that they raise additional questions about the abilityof smaller powers to socialize larger ones. In its examination of ASEAN’sevolving relations with China, the discussion below further draws attentionto the particular conditions, contexts, and processes that define ASEAN’scomplex engagement of China and that may provide further insight intoprocesses of social learning and social change.

Complex engagement in Sino-ASEAN relations, 1989–2002

Uncertainty and opportunity

Checkel and Risse identify uncertainty as one condition that can make ac-tors more open to change. In the case of ASEAN–China relations, a numberof developments threw relations onto uncertain ground and compelled bothsides to reconsider their policies and relations. Most notably, the end ofVietnam’s occupation of Cambodia in 1989, which had provided the basisfor Sino-ASEAN relations for a decade, left relations without a unifyingfocus. The US post-Cold War reprioritization of interests on trade, human


rights, interventionism, and regional security only added to the overall uncer-tainty of the regional security environment. For both ASEAN and China,the early 1990s were characterized by questions and suspicion about theother’s interests and intentions – for ASEAN, concerns focused on China’smilitary modernization and activities in the South China Sea; for China, theyfocused on ASEAN’s plans for expanded membership and the creation ofnew regional fora, especially the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). Not onlydid Beijing view such arrangements as ways for smaller powers to ‘gang upon China’ but it also suspected that they might be avenues for the UnitedStates to dominate and dictate the regional agenda (see Swaine and Tellis2000: 136; Yuan 2001: 263). At the same time, those uncertainties also openedopportunities and created incentives to reconsider the foundations of theirrelations and to engage one another in different ways.

This having been said, uncertainty is also an insufficient explanation forthe growth and improvement in relations. The precise nature of uncertaintyis that developments can work in different directions. If the ASEAN stateswere to convince China to adopt more accommodating policies towardsthe region, they would have to demonstrate or signal to China that they wereopen to working with China and, at least, were not a priori against Chineseinterests. In addition to uncertainty, efforts at reassurance were thereforecritical to their overcoming this initial uncertain period, and ASEAN’s earlyefforts to engage China in bilateral and multilateral dialogue must be givenspecial credit.

For the ASEAN states, the economic and political-security uncertaintiessurrounding the US role in Southeast Asia made it especially important forASEAN to engage China and improve relations as a kind of hedge againstthe possibility of further US retrenchment. Better relations with China, inother words, became imperative in the context of weakened US security andeconomic commitments to Southeast Asia. Indeed, despite some importantvariance in ASEAN assessments of China, there emerged notable agreementabout the necessity and value of engagement processes, both bilateral andmultilateral, as one way to militate against possible conflict with China.

Consequently, as early as 1991 China came to enjoy normal relations withall the ASEAN states – the first time since ASEAN’s founding in 1967. Mostsignificant was the emergence of new and unprecedented multilateral ar-rangements and dialogues. ASEAN began by expanding its Post-MinisterialConference (PMC) external dialogues to include four new dialogue partners,including China. The PMC then formed the basis for East Asia’s first multi-lateral security dialogue, the ARF. Other significant multilateral frameworksthat emerged during the 1990s were the South China Sea Workshops, Asia–Europe Meetings (ASEM), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC),and the ‘ASEAN Plus Three’ (China, Japan, and South Korea) (APT) meet-ings, each of which included China. Engagement and dialogue also took placebilaterally between China and ASEAN and became regularized throughthe ASEAN–China Senior Officials Consultations, ASEAN–China Joint


Cooperation Committee meetings, ASEAN Plus China framework (along-side the APT process), and regular ASEAN–China summits. These newarrangements would also open additional doors for states to communicatewith one another and to acquire new information that would factor into theirreevaluation of relations.

Power and the ASEAN Way

In China’s relations with ASEAN, conventional wisdom is that power dif-ferentials pose important (even insurmountable) obstacles to the creationof any broader community of Chinese and ASEAN states, especially as re-gards China’s willingness to comply with ASEAN norms. Such conclusionsstem from the view that China, by virtue of its greater capabilities (potentialand actual), can achieve its goals more efficiently through coercive measures.However, it would be premature to conclude that ASEAN interests will nec-essarily be shortchanged or that relations must necessarily be competitiveor conflictual as a result. In Sino-ASEAN relations, such power differencesmatter mostly in two respects. First, it can enable and constrain policy op-tions. It does not determine the type of interaction that takes place, but it isone factor that affects the range of actions available to each actor. Over time,initial actions or practices, even if initially derived from material conditionsor more instrumental calculations, can then become internalized and affecthow actors conceive their role in world politics. Second, power asymmetriescan be an attractive or detractive force in social learning processes, depend-ing on the nature and context of interaction. It is not the case, for example,that power will automatically attract followers. Instead, the ideas and imagesthat each actor has about the other, as well as their past experiences withone another, are more important to understanding how power asymmetriesaffect the process and the receptiveness of one actor to another’s message.

In relations between China and ASEAN, power asymmetries have bear-ing not only on the initial range of action available to each actor but alsoresulting normative ideas about the role each should play in world politics.China’s economic and military resources (actual and potential), for example,opens up more policy possibilities for China vis-a-vis ASEAN states, whereASEAN states have generally found themselves more constrained in a ma-terial sense. The result is that there would be more obstacles or more stepsinvolved if ASEAN states were to pursue, for example, an effective militaryresponse or deterrence strategy. Thus, smaller powers may be more inclinedat the outset to consider or adopt a non-coercive, diplomatic approach (Wendt1992: 415).

In the case of ASEAN, states have rejected a more militarized form ofregionalism since 1967 when the organization was founded. Material condi-tions and circumstances – relative power weaknesses, domestic priorities, aswell as intra-ASEAN differences, for example – played a part in states’ initialpreferences and interest in a less confrontational approach towards greater


powers; however, since then, resulting practices and subsequent interactionshave generated and strengthened ideas about ASEAN’s normative role andidentity – ideas as to the appropriateness of certain policies and actions andthe roles that actors conceive themselves playing. In particular, the generalimprovement and transformation of intra-ASEAN relations generated andstrengthened ideas about engagement and regionalism, more generally, asrelationship-building exercises. Just as more material considerations mayhave informed states’ initial preferences, today these ideas about regional-ism also bound ASEAN action and inform ASEAN’s continued eschewalof a more militarized regionalism.

At the same time, states also continued to look to the United States toprovide a stabilizing presence;4 however, as discussed above, post-Cold Waruncertainties about US policies created new pressures to find other waysto stabilize and expand their relations with China. Consequently, ASEAN’scollective diplomacy vis-a-vis China came to involve a kind of two-prongedpolicy – one based on deterrence by extra-regional powers and the otherbased on ASEAN’s complex engagement of China. Views about the value ofcomplex engagement, however, continued to strengthen over time as mem-bers came to associate engagement with first the transformation of intra-ASEAN relations and later improvements in their relations with China. Theperceived success and benefits of that approach, in other words, helped es-tablish the value and validity of reassurance processes that, reinforced byother interactions over time, became an important part of ASEAN’s orga-nizational identity. In short, though ASEAN’s preferences for inclusion andnon-confrontational engagement were certainly influenced by various ma-terial constraints and incentives, it has also come to be informed by pastpractices and ideas about ASEAN itself. Thus, the engagement and reassur-ance that are part of ASEAN diplomacy today can be seen as a product ofboth the material and the social, whereby the material set up the initial incen-tive structure, followed by social experiences that affirmed and establishedparticular ways of engagement as appropriate and distinctly ASEAN’s. Putanother way, if ASEAN today eschews a more militarized regionalism, itmay be less because it materially cannot and more because it is not the‘ASEAN Way’.

Arguments about the value of complex engagement and the particularrole ASEAN can play in socializing China (and defining regional orderin general) were given further clarification and distinction in the mid- tolate 1990s when ASEAN’s organizational and diplomatic practices cameunder criticism by Western powers that also questioned the appropriate-ness of ASEAN’s small-power coalition being at the center of mixed foralike the ARF. In their defense of ASEAN-centered arrangements, argu-ments that a ‘policy of friendship is better than a policy of containment’5

grew more prominent and called attention to the importance of inclusionand friendly reassurance in transforming uncertain relationships into co-operative ones. Also, in that China remained sensitive to questions about


intervention, especially by larger powers like the United States, ASEANelites began to argue that ASEAN was, in fact, uniquely able to engage andreassure China by virtue of its particular brand of diplomacy and the factthat members were smaller powers.

In a related vein, ASEAN states viewed various regional fora that emergedduring the decade of the 1990s as important opportunities for reassurance,persuasion, and positive reinforcement. Interdependence and transparencywere viewed as important products of that process, but, even more funda-mentally, ASEAN states hoped to convince China that its interests lay withASEAN, not against it. Thus, in the eyes of ASEAN elites, these new regionalfora – including those with explicitly economic agendas – served importantpolitical-security purposes. As one of ASEAN’s founding elites, GhazaliShafie explained about China-inclusive arrangements like the East AsianEconomic Caucus (EAEC): ‘Though economic in name, the basic thoughtwas political and social in intent to ensure togetherness and the sharingof common fate and destiny’ (Shafie 1998; Wanandi 2000: 21). Indeed, theASEAN states have approached their complex engagement of China withthe explicit purpose of persuading China of the value to be found in goodrelations with Southeast Asia and a stable regional order (Garofano 1999).In part, that means creating, as liberals argue, webs of interdependence,but it is also about encouraging China to take a less Sino-centric view thatis more respectful of Southeast Asian interests. As Jose Almonte, formerdirector general of the Philippines National Security Council, has stated:‘East Asia’s greatest single problem is how to incorporate China into itsregional arrangements – how to “socialize” the country by reducing the ele-ment of threat while accentuating the positive elements in China’s regionalrelationships’ (Almonte 1997–98: 83). ‘Socialization’ in this context is lessabout China becoming like the ASEAN states (no state really expects that),but socialization, instead, in the sense of changing China’s behavior in ac-cordance with a ‘culture of restraint’ and the ‘3 Rs’ of the ‘ASEAN Way’:restraint, respect, and responsibility (Antolik 1990; Soesastro 2003).

Thus, to say that ASEAN’s diplomacy of non-confrontational engagementwas informed by initial material conditions is not to say that ASEAN eliteshave not come to see complex engagement processes as having a compellinglogic of their own. As Malaysia’s now-former Prime Minister Mahathir ex-plained ASEAN’s style of engagement: ‘We reject the possibility of ASEANevolving into a regional, collective security arrangement or military alliance.We are able to do this because of our belief that to win friends, one should notcreate enemies.’6 At very least, elites held out the possibility that if complexengagement could transform Southeast Asia’s once conflictual relationshipsthen maybe it could do the same with respect to ASEAN’s relations withChina. In fact, the last decade has seen ASEAN give greater prominenceand centrality to complex engagement processes, such that increasingly, itis now US security guarantees that provide the hedge for engagement pro-cesses, rather than the other way around as it was in the early 1990s.7 Some


refer to ASEAN’s approach towards China as ‘engagement with insurance’(Storey 1999–2000). The shift in emphasis reflects the general view in South-east Asia that relations with China have improved in significant ways andthat much of this improvement is facilitated by complex engagement pro-cesses and the opportunities for mutual reassurance that are associated withtheir heightened interactions.

So what about China? Again, conventional wisdom is that China shouldbe more resistant to foregoing more coercive strategies that seem to promisemore immediate results. Conventional wisdom is also that China would likelyfind little reason to adopt ASEAN norms. And indeed, China had not initiallybeen very enthusiastic about participating in ASEAN and ASEAN-relatedprocesses in the early 1990s. Michael Swaine and Ashley Tellis, for example,discuss China’s concern about being locked into arrangements, as well asChina’s belief that it could better get what it wanted through bilateral nego-tiations, in which it would dominate as the larger power (Swaine and Tellis2000: 136).

As for China’s eventual willingness to participate in ASEAN’s regionalprocesses, many point to calculated and pragmatic considerations on China’spart that were based on an understanding of its short-term limitations andthe priority of economic growth. They describe China’s participation in re-gional multilateralism as a ‘tactical gambit’ towards strengthening its posi-tion on the South China Sea and/or towards constraining US and Japanesepower and influence in East Asia (Emmers 2001; Lim 1998; Montapertoand Binnendijk 1997). In a similar vein, Swaine and Tellis argue thatChina’s changed position on participation was the product of ‘constrainedchoice’, that China joined only when it became apparent that these new forawould be around for a while with or without China’s participation (Garrettand Glaser 1994: 31; Montaperto and Binnendijk 1997; Swaine and Tellis2000).

What is striking, however, is China’s continued interest and participationin regional multilateralism at a time when its situation is much improved.Its initial decision to participate in regional fora in the early 1990s may havebeen the product of constrained choice, but those constraints do not ex-plain well its continued participation or subsequent changes in its policiesand views towards regional multilateralism. They do not explain, for exam-ple, China’s being at the forefront in creating multilateral initiatives like theASEAN China Free Trade Area (ACFTA) or Shanghai Cooperation Orga-nization (SCO) with the Central Asian states; nor does it explain the newemphasis on dialogue and consultation as the foundations of regional se-curity contained in its ‘new security concept’ (Thayer 2000).8 Perhaps moststriking in China–ASEAN relations has been China’s recent and concertedcampaign to reassure ASEAN at a time of increased Chinese leverage. Suchdevelopments provide evidence that its prior ambivalence about ASEANhas been replaced by more positive assessments of ASEAN as a potentialpartner and even friend.


Thus, the relevant point here is not to deny the existence of these othermore material motives and interests on the part of China or ASEAN. Itis clear that ‘instrumental’ calculations did play a part in both their initialdecisions to engage the other. However, engagement is again not simply apolicy outcome; it is a process. The initial reasons for pursuing an engagementapproach/strategy may be partly or largely instrumental, but the processitself may still change an actor’s understanding of interests, relations, andreasons for engagement over time and given the right conditions. Whetheractors choose to focus on differences versus similarities also depends in largepart on both the context and nature of their interaction.

The context and process of complex engagement

In addition to the initial condition of uncertainty and relative power differ-ences, other factors also conditioned their initial post-Cambodia, post-ColdWar interactions. In particular, it helped that China and ASEAN sharedsome similar historical experiences that could provide the basis for a com-mon language and narrative. While China’s and ASEAN’s experiences areby no means the same, they do share an outsider’s view of the internationalsystem, as well as a historical sense of vulnerability vis-a-vis advanced in-dustrialized powers. Past experiences with Western power thus provided abasis for a narrative of culture and domination and a basis for identificationvis-a-vis the West. This context would help make more salient their commondifferences with Western powers over trade and human rights.

Such commonalities of experience, however, still do not automatically leadto a greater receptiveness to another’s message or collective identification.The presence of elites interested in drawing on that history to reconstructrelations also played an important role in shaping a new context for relations.As Risse argues, especially in cases like China–ASEAN relations in the early1990s where relations are under-institutionalized, the conscious efforts of ac-tors to create narratives that draw attention to what is similar as opposed towhat is not can be critical to the building of cooperative relations (Risse 2000:19; Risse-Kappen 1995). Thus, while recent interactions and their commonparticipation in ARF and APEC forums appear to have created opportuni-ties for both China and ASEAN to discover common ground, their abilityto recognize such commonalities was neither automatic nor instantaneous.Leaders like Lee Kuan Yew who assumed the role of ‘explaining’ China tothe West, as well as the many elites in ASEAN that took special care topublicly play down the idea of the China threat and to reassure China aboutASEAN and new regional fora, may therefore also play important roles increating an environment more conducive to change.

In addition to the initial conditions of engagement, the process of engage-ment can also affect the outcomes of socialization efforts. Here, ASEAN’smore open and inclusive style of engagement, by Checkel’s arguments above,may have helped persuade China to reconsider its views towards regional


multilateralism and ASEAN. In particular, ASEAN’s quiet informality andparticular brand of regionalism – in which ‘three ASEAN rules apply:1) exchanges remain private; 2) agreement is by consensus; and 3) internalaffairs are excluded’ (Whiting 2000) – likely factored into China’s greaterreceptiveness to ASEAN’s message. According to Checkel, that style ofengagement is likely to be more ‘attractive’ than an engagement based onpublic ‘lectures and demands’.

Another factor that likely played a part in creating more cooperative at-titudes on the part of China was the existence of a relatively stable regionalbalance of power. In relationships that lack trust, actors will require, at veryleast, consistency of interaction over time – reinforcement – if they are to be-lieve that the other means it no harm and if it is to change its behavior in turn.Such consistency and stabilization of views is difficult to achieve if an envi-ronment is in constant flux. In short, the success of socialization processesmay depend also on there being a relatively stable, material environment.

This argument about stability as another condition of social learning is notcontrary to Checkel’s and Risse’s arguments about uncertainty, but it doesunderscore the need to distinguish between different stages of the socializa-tion process. What Checkel and Risse discuss are the initial conditions underwhich actors contemplate new ideas or new thinking about a subject or rela-tionship.9 In relations between China and ASEAN, uncertainties associatedwith the end of the Cold War and Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia helpeddestabilize ideas – about each other, the United States, regional security, andeven the world in general – which then opened the door to change. At thesame time, some stability must follow if there is to be any stabilization ofexpectations and of new relations. Here, a relatively stable balance of powerduring the 1990s provided an important, if not necessary, period of stabilitythat allowed new patterns to stabilize and new ideas to take root.

It works both ways

There is evidence to believe that ASEAN’s engagement of China has beenrelatively successful at convincing China that it is more friend than foe.Again, evidence to this fact can be found especially in China’s expandedparticipation in various regional multilateralisms and its own concerted ef-forts to engage the ASEAN states. Moreover, China’s changed approachis evident across different issue areas. In trade and economics, China hasdemonstrated initiative and leadership, the two outstanding examples be-ing its commitment to not devaluing the yuan during the 1997–98 financialcrisis and its proposal to form ACFTA. In the military-security realm aswell, China has expanded its multilateral participation since the early 1990s.Bilaterally and multilaterally, China now engages in different military anddefense dialogues with the ASEAN states. In 2004, China hosted the firstSecurity Policy Conference of the ARF. Also notable are China’s changedposition on addressing the South China Sea dispute in multilateral (as


opposed to bilateral) fora as well as new willingness to develop and signregional codes of conduct, including a Code on the South China Sea. Whilefar from resolved, the diminution of tensions on contentious South ChinaSea claims is nevertheless notable, especially if one considers how that con-flict loomed large over relations in the early 1990s. These initiatives pointto China’s new appreciation for multilateral/regional processes (or, at least,particular kinds of multilateral processes), which is a stark contrast to itsviews fifteen years ago (Zhang 2002).

These changes in Chinese foreign policy and Beijing’s own engagementof ASEAN were important if relations were to move beyond the initial un-certainty stage (when relations could have turned for better or for worse)and into a stage where there is greater stability in terms of mutual expecta-tions and even greater likelihood of cooperation. And in fact, since the early1990s, the growth in Sino-ASEAN relations has contributed to the generalconsensus in Southeast Asia that relations are ‘on a much better footing thanin recent decades’ (Ho 2001: 683; Ba 2003). Thus, while ASEAN’s early re-assurance efforts and overtures to China were important to mitigating whatmight have been a spiral of insecurity in those first years after the endingof the Cambodian and Cold War conflicts, China’s response to those effortswere just as important to the improvement of relations. Engagement, inother words, had to work both ways.

To be sure, important concerns and differences remain and even the abovedevelopments are not without their caveats. Nevertheless, these develop-ments suggest important modifications in China’s behavior and means–endscalculus on questions of regional security, as well as changed expectationsand ideas about its ASEAN relations. In addition to greater flexibility inits policies towards ASEAN (Ho 2001), there appears to be a new appre-ciation for a more cooperative, multilateral approach towards neighboringstates, as well as the potential value of mutual recognition as a buildingblock of regional security and stability, at least where the ASEAN statesare concerned.10 Some Chinese participants of Track II processes have beenmost explicit about regional processes performing important reassurancefunctions towards mitigating Asian security dilemmas not only in terms ofChina–ASEAN relations but also China’s relations with Japan and the widerEast Asia (Tang 2002; Zhang 2003; Zhang and Tang 2002).11 China also ap-pears more comfortable with ASEAN taking the lead in particular areas.The fact that these attitudinal changes in China were not the product of co-ercive interactions (or new material challenges) usually emphasized in theliterature, underscores the need to think more carefully about processes ofsocial interaction and how different processes may affect social learning.

But while ASEAN states appear to be successful at persuading China tochange its views of ASEAN, China has been less successful in its own effortsto persuade ASEAN to abandon the suspicion with which its member statesview China. While most ASEAN elites do not see China as an immediate


threat and see recent developments as promising and reassuring, there is stillconcern about how deep recent changes run. Here, power differences, madesignificant by both their recent and not-so-recent relations, pose an importantobstacle to China’s ability to convince ASEAN that its intentions are benign.Thus, even given China’s and ASEAN’s common sense of vulnerability andcommon grievances against larger, Western powers, China remains a majorpower in the eyes of ASEAN, which, by contrast, self-identify as ‘smallerstates’. To use Risse’s expression, ASEAN states do not view themselves andChina as existing in the same ‘lifeworld’. That important difference continuesto pose an obstacle to better relations.

For the ASEAN states, this view of China as major power is underscoredby China’s sense of its own centrality in East Asia. As Rosemary Foot argues,that sense of regional entitlement has interacted with its sense of historicalvictimization, which at times can make it ‘hard for [China] to be sensitiveeither to the sense of entitlement that other countries might have, or to itsbigness, or to the fears that its geopolitical dominance can evoke in its neigh-bors’ (Foot 2000). If, as Risse and Checkel argue, mutuality is an importantcondition of successful socialization processes, that kind of inability to seebeyond oneself would clearly pose obstacles to learning and any rethink-ing of self and other. China’s initial unwillingness to work with ASEAN onquestions like the Spratly Islands disputes in the early 1990s only served toconfirm for many their worst suspicions.

As discussed above, China’s views about ASEAN and regional multilater-alism have changed significantly since that initial period. And, overall, thereare indications that Chinese leadership, media, academia, and even militaryhave a greater understanding for ASEAN’s particular dilemma as weakerpowers (Whiting 2000). In contrast to the early 1990s, which were character-ized by ASEAN efforts to reassure China, for example, the latter part of the1990s and now the early part of the twenty-first century have seen China stepup its efforts to address ASEAN concerns and to demonstrate to ASEAN itspolitical and economic value as a partner, even trusted regional leader. As inASEAN’s efforts to reassure China in the early 1990s, the success of China’sefforts will depend in large part on how it chooses to engage ASEAN andits ability to demonstrate its commitment to good relations over time.

Thus far, Beijing appears to be pursuing a policy with an eye for the longterm. Especially impressive is the persistence of China’s engagement andattention. Again, consistency and persistence over time would seem to becritical factors in convincing actors that change is anything more than skindeep. One test of China’s commitment would thus be whether or not in-terest in engagement persisted beyond the original circumstances that firstproduced the policy. In this sense, the 1997–98 financial crisis offered onetest of relations because of the material changes associated with it. As dis-cussed above, China, despite reservations, had some important economicand political interests to engage ASEAN in the early 1990s. However, af-ter the financial crisis much of the perceived advantages of associating with


ASEAN had dissipated. ASEAN’s claims to regional leadership, for ex-ample, were undermined by its perceived disarray in managing the crisis.Post-crisis ASEAN also looked far less attractive as trade or investmentpartners as foreign and domestic capital took flight, while China remainedrelatively unscathed by the crisis. China’s entrance into the WTO and therush of investment into China only underscored deepening asymmetries andthe reversal of situations that had taken place.

Given their changed circumstances, one might therefore expect that Chinawould reprioritize its relations with ASEAN, but instead China appears tohave intensified its reassurance efforts. Recent overtures also suggest greatersensitivity or recognition of ASEAN concerns and insecurities. Initiativeslike ACFTA, for example, were partly in response to vocal and increasinglysharp concerns about the ‘economic threat’ posed by China to ASEAN’seconomies still recovering from the 1997–98 Asian economic crisis. In 2003China responded to ASEAN’s heightened concerns that China was divertingforeign investment away from Southeast Asia with a pledge to increaseChinese investment in the ASEAN economies.

Its efforts to accommodate some of ASEAN’s most important concerns,despite changed circumstances, are thus especially notable. In the caseof ACFTA, China’s concessions included an ‘early harvest’ provisioninvolving early (though partial) liberalization of China’s agricultural sectorover three years (agriculture being the most important issue in ASEAN’strade relations).12 China also agreed to extend MFN status to ASEAN’snewer members, which are not yet WTO members, in addition to promisingthem ‘special and differential treatment and flexibility in implementation’(five extra years – by 2015 – to comply with the agreement).13 In addition,China agreed to write off the debts owed it by ASEAN’s four newestmembers.14 In that the original ASEAN members have been concernedabout the development gap between old and new ASEAN members,China’s willingness to be flexible has contributed, in the words of oneMalaysian trade ministry official, ‘much good will’ in ASEAN.15

Other examples of China’s attention to ASEAN include visits by Hu Jin-tao and others in the lead-up to China’s 16th Party Congress in 2002, whichaimed to reassure ASEAN states about China’s impending leadership transi-tion and to demonstrate the leadership’s continued commitment to relations.And then, in 2003, China – in what ASEAN Secretary General Ong KengYong described as a ‘trail-blazing’ move – became the first non-ASEANsignatory to ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), an espe-cially significant gesture given that TAC has long been considered a corner-stone of an ASEAN-based regional order.16 China’s accession to TAC wasthen followed by another first, that is, its expressed willingness to sign ontoASEAN’s Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, making itthe first nuclear power to express such willingness.

Even the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)might be considered another example of China’s greater responsiveness to


ASEAN’s concerns (as well as the persuasiveness of ASEAN’s complex en-gagement approach). As SARS spread to Southeast Asia, ASEAN stateswere especially sharp in their criticisms about the lack of transparencywith which China handled the problem. Led by Singapore and Thailand,ASEAN’s ‘quiet persuasion’ led to China’s admission of earlier missteps indealing with the crisis, as well as expressions of regret from Chinese PremierWen Jiabao. China then followed up with proposals for new cooperation.Consequently, though SARS began as a kind of crisis for China–ASEAN re-lations – the first significant challenge to their post-Asian financial crisis rela-tions – its conclusion was marked by the expansion of China–ASEAN coop-eration into new areas of health and transnational human security threats.17

It is through this kind of continued attention to ASEAN – moreover, ata time when China seems to have less need to and when other powers seemto be giving less attention to ASEAN than they once did – that China hopesto reassure ASEAN states about its power and its intentions. Consequently,despite some persistent concerns and uncertainty about how to interpretChina’s motives, China’s recent gestures have also made ASEAN a littlemore receptive to its efforts to persuade ASEAN that it desires to be a ‘long-term friend’.18 If current developments continue, the social foundations laidover the last decade and a half will also grow stronger, making it more likelythat relations will be able to weather future disagreements and conflictswithout crisis.

Conclusion

George Yeo, Singapore’s trade minister, remarked in 2002 that ‘The emer-gence of China as a political, economic, and cultural power will affect ourlives in a thousand ways.’ There can be little doubt that ASEAN has muchriding on ongoing socialization efforts. The above discussion gives reasonfor both caution and optimism. On the one hand, there is a greater den-sity of interactions in all areas; confidence-building measures continue tobroaden and deepen; and relations appear to have achieved a stability thatdid not exist fifteen years ago. On the other hand, social learning and theevolution of relations also remain contingent processes. At the very least,until relations are more institutionalized, the presence of actors interestedin recasting relations in a cooperative light will continue to be critical. Arelatively stable regional security environment is also likely to be importantif relations are to stabilize around cooperative norms. In contrast to fifteenyears ago, however, today there are important opportunities for reassurance,as well as a growing interdependence, that can help militate against conflict,if not create strong foundations for future cooperation.

The recent evolution of China–ASEAN relations sheds light on someof the conditions and processes involved in social learning, especially theroles played by uncertainty, power, and different types of interaction. Asboth Risse and Checkel hypothesize, social learning may be more likely in a


novel situation of uncertainty where actors lack sufficient knowledge aboutthe other’s interests or a particular situation (Checkel 2001: 563; Risse 2000:33). Here, uncertainties about the post-Cold War, post-Cambodia strategicenvironment destabilized old ideas and helped make actors more receptiveto new ideas about relations. At the same time, a favorable environmentfor social learning will be one that allows for social reinforcement overtime. Thus, a subsequent period of stability may also be necessary for so-cial learning to take place because it will be more difficult for new patternsand perceptions to stabilize if actors are constantly reassessing situations andrelations in response to new challenges. In the evolution of China–ASEANrelations, post-Cold War, post-Cambodia uncertainties provided a catalystfor new thinking about regional relationships, but a subsequent period ofstability – in this case, provided by a relatively stable balance of power – wasalso an important condition that allowed for stability in engagement pro-cesses that, in turn, allowed for a reinforcement of new ideas, a stabilizationof new patterns of interaction, as well as meaningful change in China’s andASEAN’s perceptions of one another.

As discussed above, much distrust remains, especially among ASEANstates about China, and questions about whether China’s commitment toregional processes reflects only a short-term calculus. In this sense, time willbe an important measure of whether recent developments reflect deeperchanges in China’s conceptions of interests and relations with the ASEANstates (or vice versa) – ‘time’ because changes in China’s policies and behav-ior must transcend the original circumstances or situation that first producedthem if they are to be indicative of anything more than opportunistic change.

On the question of power, power matters but not always in the ways thatIR theorists have envisioned. First, power matters in that it, along with ideasabout how to use it, defines a range of possible policies available to an actor.More powerful actors will have greater capacity to adopt more coerciveapproaches as a first option to get what they want or think they need. Lesspowerful actors are likely to be more constrained and consequently maybe more likely at the outset to engage in arguing processes to get what theywant. At the same time, resulting practices also come to shape both the socialcontext and the identities of actors themselves, which in turn creates differentkinds of constraints on future behavior. Here, too, it may be important toview social learning as having different stages. Finally, power asymmetriesare not in themselves an attracting or detracting force in questions of sociallearning. It is more important to consider the social context of interactionsand the types of interactions that take place.

On the role of process, both Risse and Checkel hypothesize that the kindof interaction and kind of persuasion have bearing on the social outcome. Forboth Checkel and Risse, arguing processes where persuasion is based on mu-tual exchange are likely to be more effective than unidirectional ‘lectures anddemands’ (Checkel 2001; Risse 2000). Checkel also adds that actors are morelikely to be receptive to persuasion when the process is private, insulated,


and less politicized. ASEAN’s complex engagement of China based on non-confrontational interactions and mutual exchange may thus be an importantreason why China has become more receptive to ASEAN’s message of coex-istence and cooperation. Here, further research contrasting China’s partici-pation in different kinds of arrangements and processes and under differentconditions could shed additional light on the dynamics of ASEAN–Chinarelations in particular and of socialization processes in general.

The discussion above highlights the point that successful persuasionstrategies may require a deliberative/interactive, as opposed to didac-tic/unidirectional, process. Just as this may be one reason why ASEAN’smessage has been more persuasive, it may also be one reason why China’shas been less so. Though China today has adopted a more open and ac-commodating approach towards ASEAN and is becoming more persuasivein the process, China’s past predilection towards a didactic and less com-promising approach towards ASEAN – a predilection that still occasionallymakes a strong appearance – presents an obstacle to relations that it muststill overcome. Lastly, one should not forget that influence and now engage-ment works both ways, which means that ASEAN, too, is unlikely to be leftunchanged from the process.

In sum, the heightened frequency and intensity of Sino-ASEAN relationsover the last fifteen years, the establishment of multiple and regular avenuesof communication, as well as a certain consistency in their interactions sug-gest qualitative changes in this relationship since the late 1980s. Thoughconclusions about the future of Sino-ASEAN relations at this stage can beonly tentative, one can point to positive developments in relations, includ-ing a heightened willingness on both sides to give the other the ‘benefit ofthe doubt’. In addition, it is important to note that neither successful social-ization nor good relations requires that there be a definitive conclusion toall conflicts. While the sovereignty of South China Sea claims, for example,may indeed be non-negotiable, moderation and self-restraint, as well as theadoption of new strategies and approaches, are still important indicators ofsocial learning and social change. Similarly, equality also should not be seenas a prerequisite for good relations. In this case, the goal of complex engage-ment processes is not equality so much as it is to achieve mutual respect andmutual agreement about their relations and their respective roles. For ex-ample, if China and ASEAN can arrive at common understandings of theirrelations as cooperative rather than competitive, then power asymmetrieswill matter less. Communities are made up of different actors with differentroles; the future of Sino-ASEAN relations depends on their both being ableto reach a ‘reasoned consensus’ about the roles they are each to play.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Amitav Acharya, Matthew J. Hoffmann, andRichard Stubbs for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.


Notes

1 As Stuart Harris and others have observed, ‘Establishing a sense of community[has been] an important goal and consequence of multilateral processes in Asia’(Harris 2000: 501).

2 In addition to Keohane and Nye above, see also Rosecrance (1986).3 By the same token, elites can also have just the opposite effect and exacerbate

divisions.4 It should be noted, however, that ASEAN states did have important differences

about the form of that US security presence, and, in general, varying comfortlevels about such a role for the United States. These differences were most evi-dent in 1990 and 1992 during the public disagreements between Singapore andIndonesia over Singapore’s decision to provide expanded access and support forUS forces in the Pacific and to the relocating of US logistics facilities to Singaporefrom the Philippines. See, for example, Balakrishnan and Vatikiotis (1990: 8–10);‘Unease over bases’ (1992: 4).

5 ‘Japan PM talks on ASEAN in KL’, Jakarta Post (Reuters), 9 January 1997, p. 11.6 ‘Economic, security issues dominate ASEAN Summit’, Indonesia Times, 15 De-

cember 1987.7 See Snitwongse (2000). On the primacy of US security guarantees, the exceptions

may be the Philippines and Singapore, though both would agree that engagementprocesses are important and have played a role in the improvement of China–ASEAN relations.

8 See also China’s 1998 defense white paper, China’s National Defense.9 See also Swidler (1986), Cruz (2000), Legro (2000), and Ikenberry and Kupchan

(1990) on how crisis can open the door to new thinking.10 Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping, both of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

and participants in regional Track II processes, argue that

China’s leaders understand clearly that an aggressive security strategyis simply not a viable option . . . [that] an expansionist policy may leadits neighbours to form a counterbalancing alliance with distant pow-ers, most likely the US . . . [but] if . . . China adopts a more coopera-tive approach, most regional countries would be reluctant to adopt ahard-core containment policy and [China] would enjoy a benign securityenvironment.

(Zhang and Tang 2002)

11 This is not to say that there may not still be debate, especially from those who donot take part in regional processes and thus may not be persuaded to abandonold strategies. See, for example, Wang (2000).

12 Products covered under the early harvest package include about 600 se-lected agricultural products in the following categories: live animals, meat,fish, dairy products, other animal products, live trees, vegetables, fruit andnuts.

13 ASEAN Secretariat Press Release: ‘ASEAN–China Free Trade Area negoti-ations to start next year’, 30 October 2002; available at the ASEAN website(http://www.aseansec.org).

14 ‘Vietnamese PM cites new challenges facing ASEAN at Summit in Phnom Penh’,VNA News Agency, via BBC Worldwide Monitoring, 5 November 2002.

15 Interview with author, Kuala Lumpur, August 2002.16 ‘ASEAN secretary-general on Sino-ASEAN relations’, Xinhua General News

Agency, 19 August 2003.17 For a discussion of the SARS crisis in China–ASEAN relations, see Breckon

(2003).


18 George Yeo commenting on ASEAN’s initial hesitation and then acceptanceof China’s proposed ACFTA. ‘China’s free trade proposal shocked ASEAN’,Agence France Press, 15 March 2002.

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Who's socializing whom? Complex engagement in Sino-ASEAN relations

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