China and Southeast Asia: Global Changes and Regional Challenges

6. NON-TRADITIONAL SECURITY AND CHINA-ASEAN RELATIONS: Co-operation, Commitments and Challenges by Cai Peng Hong

146 Cai Peng Hong 6 NON-TRADITIONAL SECURITY AND CHINA-ASEAN RELATIONS Co-operation, Commitments and Challenges Cai Peng Hong INTRODUCTION Like other parts of the world, East Asian nations including China and ASEAN have been genuinely concerned about non-traditional security issues, particularly since the 1997 financial crisis and 2003 SARs. With this background, this chapter will focus on the new developments in political and security relations between China and ASEAN, especially in their cooperation , roles and prospects in addressing “non-traditional security” issues. Non-traditional security is a term in debates within China as well as international academic circles, but the ASEAN-China joint declaration has adopted the concept, generally defining it under the state’s sovereignty. I will therefore review the bilateral relations development along the lines of traditional security but will emphasize on the non-traditional security, particularly in view of China’s signing of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TACSA), which originally implies and serves as a foundation of traditional security. I regard non-traditional security as a new phenomenon and doubt whether a realist approach will still be of help, but consider a liberal approach as being 06 China & SEA Pt III/Ch 6 20/1/05, 12:22 PM 146 Non-traditional Security and China-ASEAN Relations 147 possibly useful, to facilitate co-operation. This is a policy analysis and thus, any statement or claim that nations like ASEAN members and China have made would be looked at as an important step towards co-operation in the fight against non-traditional security issues and further co-operation in the future security of East Asia. CHINESE PERSPECTIVES OF “NON-TRADITIONAL SECURITY” Since the end of the Cold War, Chinese policymakers and academics have reviewed and discussed the concept of security, coincident with the “lively debate over the meaning of security” worldwide (Tow and Trood 2000, p. 13). Such discussions and reviews have generated a clear contour of academic perception in China over non-traditional security from a state-centric view, to a blend of state-centric and neo-liberalist security concerns that include not only the protection of the foundations of the state against external threats but also other types of security values and other types of threats, although there is still some ambiguity within the policy-making circles. Taking a realist approach, Chinese security studies have traditionally focused on external threats to state security and internal instability possibly affecting the legitimacy of a government or current authority. As a revolutionary regime emerged in 1949, China made every effort to consolidate state power in its initial years. For revolutionary leaders like Mao Zedong and others, what made sense in security were those military threats against the new state from external sources, mainly from the U.S.led West at first, and then from the former Soviet Union (USSR) (Mao 1994). Domestic factors that seemed to threaten the viability of the new regime primarily include remnants of the KMT regime in Taiwan and perhaps revisionists inside the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and government. From the realist theory, a nation’s security means ensuring the survival of a nation state from an external aggressor trying to occupy land and overthrow the ruling regime, and from internal subversion, although that theory emphasizes less on internal threats. This state-centric paradigm dominated the agendas of security policy studies in academic and policy circles for more than thirty years. Immediately after the end of the destructive Cultural Revolution (1966– 76), Deng Xiaoping’s rehabilitation in 1977 heralded a new age in China, which embarked on economic reform. Deng re-evaluated and then abandoned Mao’s thoughts on global war. According to Deng’s new thinking in the early 1980s, neither a new world war nor a mass military aggression directed against China would be possible in the foreseeable future. This indicated that 06 China & SEA Pt III/Ch 6 20/1/05, 12:22 PM 147 148 Cai Peng Hong traditional threats of security to the state would be stressed less and less but new issues would contribute to a new security situation with the shift in national strategy to economic construction. With the end of the Cold War, the bipolar world order disappeared. Instead, the whole world seemed to shift towards a new focus, that is, economic development. That this phenomenon has taken place without any major war among the big powers, further supported...