By Zhai Kun
At the 10+3 summit with ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian
Nations) on the one hand and China, Japan and South Korea on the
other, Premier Wen Jiabao put forward the idea of "East Asia in
harmony," which goes hand in hand with the ideas of "harmonious
Asia," "harmonious Asia-Pacific" and "harmonious world" previously
suggested by Chinese leaders.
The gravitas of "East Asia in harmony" lies in bringing about
the East Asian commonwealth. Facilitating the coming of a
"harmonious world" through regional cooperation appears very
prominently in China's diplomacy.
China's regional cooperation strategy can be summed up as
promoting regional economy and security, with peaceful development
as the departure point.
China is also striving to get involved in trans-regional
cooperation.
Through mechanisms such as Asian cooperation dialogs and the
Boao Forum for Asia, the country is asserting itself as an Asian
economic entity.
At the same time, China is forging a cooperative belt on its
periphery by promoting regional cooperation in East Asia,
strengthening the role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,
and establishing connections with the South Asian Association for
Regional Cooperation.
The country is also trying to deepen economic interdependence
with its neighbors.
On the security front, China is getting involved in crafting
comprehensive regional security mechanisms. The country has become
a member of five major security cooperation systems in Asia-Pacific
and is the founder of a number of security mechanisms on its
peripheries.
In the course of dialog and cooperation in the security field,
China has initiated its "new security outlook", discarding the Cold
War mentality.
All this has helped boost mutual trust in Southeast Asia, South
Asia and Central Asia.
We can reach a number of conclusions that may help clear away
misgivings about China's presence in various regional cooperation
undertakings.
First, China's regional cooperation strategy should be treated
as a whole.
Some foreign researchers and scholars keep asking: "Does China
take an active role in regional cooperation out of economic or
political considerations?" And "Does China attach more importance
to 10+3, or the East Asia Summit, or Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation?"
The answer is: China's regional cooperation strategy is
comprehensive by nature and every link is indispensable, though
different mechanisms focus on different areas.
Also, the country's regional cooperation strategy is constantly
tuned to adjust to changing situations.
For example, when cooperation in Asia-Pacific became a trend,
China plunged in. When the Asian financial crisis hit, China,
together with other East Asian countries, faced up squarely to the
challenge.
It can be stated that the regional cooperation framework has now
taken shape and China will fine-tune the framework's mechanisms in
accordance with changes taking place in the regional cooperation
terrain.
Second, China's regional cooperation strategy does not rebuff
the US.
The US has gotten increasingly concerned over China's
involvement in regional cooperation in East Asia since George W.
Bush took office in 2001.
Last year, President Bush put forward the idea of forging an
Asia-Pacific free trade zone, hoping for a new order in the area,
with the US as the nucleus.
In fact, the areas covered by China's regional cooperation
strategy, which is based in Asia and involves Eurasia and
Asia-Pacific, largely overlap with spheres covered by the US'
Eurasia geopolitical strategy as defined by Zbigniew Brzezinski in
his book The Grand Chessboard.
Therefore, in the long term, China and the US will enjoy a
larger space for cooperation.
Third, it is beyond China's power to synthesize all the regional
cooperative mechanisms.
In recent years, new phenomena have showed up in the landscape
of regional cooperation in Asia.
The organizations originally geared to economic cooperation, for
instance, are expanding their business to cover security
matters.
At the same time, the security orientated cooperative
organizations are branching out into economics.
Also, the 10+3 mechanism, which was originally designed to bring
about the East Asia commonwealth, is striving to make the
cooperation all-embracing.
Does this mean that China will go all out to assure that
cooperation in the separate fields of economics and security, which
is at the core of the country's regional cooperation strategy, be
merged? The answer is no.
This is because geographic, economic, political, cultural and
ethnic diversity in Asia, multiplied by its extensive connections
with other parts of the world, dictates that regional cooperation
in Asia will be conducted through multiple channels, not one or two
unified ones.
This is also because building a "world in harmony" needs the
participation of all parties. It is not exclusively China's
business.
(The author is a researcher at the China Research Institute
for Modern International Relations Studies.)
(China Daily January 23, 2007)
