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China and Southeast Asia: Changes in Strategic Perceptions 3 1 CHINA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA Changes in Strategic Perceptions Wang Gungwu Many books have been written since the start of the new century to discuss the relations between China and Southeast Asia. Most have concentrated on more immediate challenges like China’s impact on Southeast Asian economic development and new ways of looking at the question of East Asian economic integration. Some have examined the problems for a larger Asia-Pacific region concerning long-term issues of defence and security. Yet others have dealt with Japanese and American reactions to China’s initiatives in Southeast Asia, the interests of the European Community and the implications for global politics. This book seeks to combine the global changes with regional challenges. In that context, this essay shall focus on one of the key aspects of the subject, how regional developments depend on Asia’s perceptions of the rise of American power in the twentieth century.* Southeast Asia as a region found recognition by acting together as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in its relations with larger powers. The dramatic story of its growth in the course of about thirty years is yet to be fully told, but the process is inspiring, if not also a little surprising. Through the ASEAN Regional Forum and the larger Asia Pacific Economic *An earlier version was presented as a lecture in Canberra at the Australian Defence College in August 2003. 01 China & SEA Pt I/Ch 1 20/1/05, 12:21 PM 3 4 Wang Gungwu Co-operation (APEC) meetings, the region was supported by the United States and key countries in Western Europe, Japan and Australia and, more recently, Korea and a reforming China. As a result, several of its original members moved quickly away from Third World status to be beacons to underdeveloped countries elsewhere. In this context, the region expanded to its present ten members and gained enough confidence to speed up its efforts to create a Free Trade Area. By 2002, six of its members had begun to reduce most of the remaining tariffs among themselves. They were thus ready to respond positively when China offered to negotiate a Free Trade Agreement with the whole region within ten years. China, on the other hand, cannot be a region by itself nor does it need to be part of any region. It is a large historical polity bordered on all four sides by peoples it has had to befriend, control, or defend against. China was a magnet for traders when it was at peace, a rich target for envious and hostile neighbours when it was weak, and a dangerous enemy when it felt threatened and was aroused to defend its place as a civilization. Nor did others before modern times see China as any kind of region. It was only during the nineteenth century that, from the point of view of the British Empire, and ultimately also from that of various nations in Western Europe, China was grouped together with Japan, Thailand and various colonies east of British India in a fuzzy region that was called the Far East. When that centre of power shifted from Europe after the Second World War, during the era of the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, it was thought more appropriate to say that China was part of East Asia. More recently, with the growing recognition of a region called Southeast Asia, there have been efforts to see China as a part of the region to its north, that of Northeast Asia. For the understandable reason that this region includes an economic powerhouse like Japan and a potential power in a reunited Korea, that identification has not been a successful one. No regional grouping has emerged. On the contrary, recent moves reflecting the rivalry of the major powers seem to be leading to yet other kinds of groupings, including the idea of an Eastern Asia that encompassed both Northeast and Southeast Asia through the integration of ASEAN+3 (that is, China, Japan and Korea) and, more recently, even one that might include some of the members of the region further west, that of South Asia. But even this move does not seem to meet the needs of contemporary geopolitics. There is the larger global picture in which China cannot look to any one region. Its land borders tie the country to Russia in what might be called “Northern Asia”, to the new...

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