ABSTRACT
In 2003 Jürgen Haacke posed the problem of whether China had either challenged or reinforced ASEAN’s diplomatic and security culture (Haacke 2003: 112). This question encapsulates why China’s relationship with the ARF is of interest for the broader debate in International Relations over how institutions transform the identity and norms that shape the foreign policies of states. Whereas Haacke’s question poses the possibility that China could challenge the ‘ASEAN way’, other commentators on East Asian regionalism see the problem from the perspective of whether an institution like the ARF can be used to extend the particular norms of ASEAN to the broader Asia-Pacific by modifying the policy preferences of powers like China (Acharya 2001: 165-85). This distinction is important for analysts of Chinese foreign policy who claim that Beijing’s commitment to regional multilateralism is symptomatic of an evolution of norms that shape its behaviour in ways that challenge the pessimistic expectations of realist thinkers that rising great powers inevitably lead to instability and conflict (Kang 2007a: 19, Mearsheimer 2001). This chapter argues that China’s participation in the ARF shows that a more complex relationship of convergence with ASEAN norms has developed, which falls somewhere between these extremes. Earlier work on this subject suggested that the ARF showed how multilateralism could be used to mediate the greater regional balance of power in the Asia-Pacific (Leifer 1996, Emmers 2003b, Haacke 2002, 2003). If a ‘diplomatic and security culture’ is understood in terms of Haacke’s definition to mean ‘a normative terrain on which leaders and diplomats have met and meet and which serves the mediation of both their estrangement and insecurity’ (Haacke 2003: 2), then recent developments confirm that this was made possible largely by a convergence between the rather conservative and state-centric norms of international behaviour held by both China and ASEAN before the ARF was established in 1994. At the same time, one could argue that there has been a failure to create a shared diplomatic and security culture within which challenges to the sovereignty of states on either side can be addressed. This is largely due to a combination of the increasing salience of Chinese nationalism and geo-
strategic concerns, which lead to territorial demands that cannot be met without breaching state-centric norms. Moreover, while both sides accept the norm of power balancing as central to maintaining regional order, their policies differ because they envisage quite different adversaries. Such problems, which have been apparent since the ARF’s creation, remain unresolved. Arguably, the possibility of ASEAN shaping Chinese norms has become less feasible as regional multilateralism is now at the centre of Beijing’s foreign policy in a way that has exceeded the expectations of most observers. More specifically, since China emerged with new confidence as a rising power from the Asian Financial Crisis that hit the region in 1997, it felt free to develop an alternative regionalism that is compatible with its own values. This raises the prospect of ARF remaining an important vehicle for Beijing’s promotion of a regional security community only insofar as it contains the influence of the United States and its allies, while the work of building an East Asian Community takes place elsewhere. If this is the case, the answer to Haacke’s question is that China has successfully appropriated and modified ASEAN’s diplomatic and security culture to fit its own instrumental preferences for the institutionalisation of the ARF.
