ABSTRACT
If the United States and the Soviet Union (until its replacement by the less significant Russia) may be described as global powers with a regional interest in the Asia-Pacific, China may be understood as a regional power with global influence.1 China’s principal security interests are largely concentrated in the Asia-Pacific and its capacity to project power is limited in the main to that region. But the most important threats to its security as perceived by successive Chinese leaders came from one or other of the superpowers and for the first forty years of its existence the PRC treated its security problems within the region as a function of its relations with the two superpowers. The predominance of the superpowers in the Chinese perspective necessarily gave China’s regional concerns a global orientation. Indeed in the 1980s it was persuasively argued that China did not even have a regional policy as such.2 It is only since the end of the Cold War that China’s leaders have developed policies which recognize that the future security and prosperity of their country requires the cultivation of close relations with the AsiaPacific as a whole. This regional orientation does not mean that China’s leaders have ceased to think of their country in global terms, but it is a recognition of the centrality of the region to the Chinese economy and of the importance of the fast growing Chinese economy to the region itself. Since the Asia-Pacific region is regarded not only as a major economic centre alongside those of Europe and North America, but also as an engine of growth for the world economy as a whole, China’s growing weight within the region serves to enhance its global significance too. However, China’s emergence as a rising power has raised new problems for its smaller neighbours in the region as to how best to accommodate it while preserving their independence.
