As China’s neighbor, Southeast Asia feels immediately the effects of China’s external conduct. The relations between the two, however, have undergone dramatic ups and downs since the founding of the PRC in 1949. The relations were initially marked by diplomatic recognition from 1949 to 1954 and a decade of rapprochement from 1955 to 1965. The relatively friendly ties, however, were upset during 1965-71, when China was plunged into the radical domestic upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. The ties were only partially resuscitated in the 1970s. The improvement, however, has become steady and solid since the late 1970s. After the late 1980s, the relations were rapidly strengthened; they have been expanded and upgraded in the following decades. The evolution of China’s relations with Southeast Asia from 1949 to the

present epitomizes that of China’s foreign policy. By explaining the change in China’s relations with Southeast Asia we can thus gain a good understanding of the factors that shape China’s foreign policy in general, especially the dominant factors. This study points to a host of relevant factors that accounted for the ups and downs of China’s relations with Southeast Asia in the past four decades. These include China’s domestic development, relations between the big powers, political and economic geography, and political ideology. While these factors combined to render China’s relations with most of Southeast Asia fragile and even hostile in the 1960s, they have also led to the deepening of relations since the mid 1990s. The most noticeable factor shaping China’s foreign relations is China’s

domestic political and economic development. The PRC’s need for friendly neighbors and diplomatic recognition in its formative years produced a moderate and pragmatic diplomacy in the 1950s and the early 1960s, exemplified by its skilful manoeuvres at the Bandung Conference in 1955. From 1965 to 1970, however, Mao’s efforts to safeguard his revolutionary course at home and his provocative diplomacy for a revolutionary order abroad had damaged China’s ties with Southeast Asia, and to a lesser extent from 1971 to 1976. In particular, China’s support for communism in Asia and its subtle treatment of overseas ethnic Chinese as compatriots was viewed by Southeast Asian countries as significant obstacles for genuine relations with Beijing. Since the late 1970s China has shifted away from Mao’s radicalism toward economic

reform and development, paving the way for China’s reconciliation with Southeast Asia. China’s diplomacy has taken a more peaceful path, culminating in the pronouncement of a strategy of China’s peaceful rise in 2003. Driven by the considerations of domestic development and legitimacy and security of the new regime, China steadfastly improved relations with Southeast Asian nations in the 1980s and especially the early 1990s. These considerations, along with domestic economic development and growing involvement in regional manufacturing and trade linkages, also induced China to expand and upgrade its ties with the region. The external strategy that China’s leaders have been pursuing from the start

of the reform era is peaceful diplomacy for domestic development. Before the late 1980s, this strategy was applied mainly to nations other than the expansionist Soviet Union and its aggressive allies. It has been applied to most nations afterwards. This strategy finds a variant of expressions under different top leaders, such as Deng’s concept of “peace and development” in the 1980s, Jiang’s “responsible great power” in the 1990s, and “peaceful rise” under President Hu Jintao in the 2000s.1